This week's massive job loss in Southwestern Ontario comes to us from Chatham, already ravaged by the loss of the Navistar Truck plant:
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2012/02/29/19439676.html
This is not the Canada I remember growing up with, and I have a little rant I need to get off my chest. As some of you know I currently work in Latin America, in a region that has economically grown by leaps and bounds over the past 18 years. It really bothers me when local people here question why I, a Canadian, would want to work in their country when I'm from a golden "land of opportunity". Locals I talk to are absolutely shocked when I tell them about London's unemployment rate, and about the multitude of employers that have closed down in Southwestern Ontario (EMD, Ford Talbotville, Sterling, etc.); in some cases, job losses their country has directly benefitted from. They also don't know about the unemployment problems in other parts of Ontario, and in the Maritimes. Instead, they cite the number of people from their country who go to Canada to work (not knowing that most of them are actually seasonal farm workers going to pick tobacco in Norfolk County). The Canada we're living with today is not the image of Canada they had.
I spoke with a man from Cleveland recently who echoed my sentiment with respect to the United States, and he said that many people from where I am now who crossed into the United States (legally or otherwise) to find work have been so shocked by the economic problems in that country that they've gone back home to find work. Being from Downtown Cleveland, he knows what he's talking about.
This isn't the 1950s anymore, where Canada and the United States were booming, and most of Latin America was in the third world.
There, end of rant.