Jobs minister Pierre Poilievre deletes tweet about job losses, keeps tweet about Drake

June’s job numbers are in.

No doubt you are already asking yourself: how did Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre react to the news?

Despite Statistics Canada reporting a net job loss of 6,400 jobs, with 71,000 part-time job losses offsetting any gains in full-time employment, or the problem of 26,000 fewer youths having a job in June compared with a month earlier, Poilievre took to Twitter and triumphantly announced “an increase of nearly 65,000 full time jobs in June.” 

However, only two hours later, Poilievre’s tweet was deleted without explanation.

What happened?

Well, for one thing, Poilievre appears to have been citing a satirical twitter account that tweets made-up facts about Canada. @StatCan_eng is Statistics Canada’s real twitter account, @Stats_Canada is a joke account:

Thanks to Stephen Harper’s singing career, Chad Kroeger is now Alberta’s second worst musician

— Stats Canada (@stats_canada) December 3, 2013

Another thing is the new Labour Force Survey actually lends further evidence to the growing belief that the Canadian economy is already in recession.

Friday’s job numbers show job growth fell from 0.4% in the first quarter to 0.2% in the second quarter, suggesting GDP is likely not picking up.

In the first quarter of 2015, Canada’s real GDP shrank by 0.1%. While second quarter data is not yet available, Bank of America and TD Bank, to name only two examples, say Canada is already in recession.

Also on Friday, Poilievre tweeted a video edited to show Grammy Award-winning Canadian rapper Drake applauding a recent speech Poilievre delivered about the need for more trades jobs:

Even @Drake supports the trades https://t.co/MM55uw0KVf

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) July 10, 2015

That video was created in response to another video produced by Employment and Social Development Canada, wherein a clip of Poilievre delivering a speech on skilled trades is creatively edited with a clip of a crowd gathered in a sports stadium applauding a little too intensely: 

Start watching this video of @PierrePoilievre at the 1:30 mark https://t.co/lvhbq2Rayf

— Stephen Maher (@stphnmaher) July 9, 2015

^{Photo: ESDC, Instagram}