Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says Canadians should expect a "continuing deterioration" of employment figures for much of this year before the Conservative budget can turn around the country's economic fortunes and create jobs.
Canada's unemployment rate for January was 7.2 per cent, with 129,000 jobs lost, according to Statistics Canada figures released last month put. It was the largest monthly decline in more than three decades.
Employment statistics for February will be released on Friday, and Flaherty told CTV's Question Period on Sunday that while he did not know what the exact numbers will be, the news could be grim.
"I don't know the figures," Flaherty said. "But as I've said before, we need to anticipate reasonably that we're going to see continuing deterioration, continuing worse numbers, with respect to employment over this quarter certainly, and into the next quarter and in 2009 generally."
Flaherty would not speculate how high Canada's unemployment rate would reach.
However, he said that once the federal government's budget, which contains billions for infrastructure projects, gets passed and money starts flowing into the economy, Canadians will be able to get back to work.
"We have our plan and we need to get it moving forward, get the stimulus into the Canadian economy to help cushion the impact of what is a global recession," Flaherty said.
Flaherty would not revise previous comments he had made, in which he predicted growth in Canada's economy by the end of this year.
He said those predictions were based on the assumption that government stimulus would flow into the economy quickly.
However, Liberal MPs have threatened to hold up $3 billion the Tories want to spend quickly to get some infrastructure projects off the ground, citing a lack of detail on what projects the money will fund.
Flaherty said that the emergency fund would be subject to the same scrutiny as other government spending, including vetting by the Treasury Board.
"If we get that job done, if we're permitted by Parliament to implement what we need to do, the Canadian economy will look better as we get toward the end of this year and into next year," Flaherty said.
