The Harper government likes to remind Canadians that we’ve done better than most developed nations in bouncing back from the global economic crisis. But digging into the data shows why many people might be having trouble cheering this news: wages have not kept pace with inflation, and new hires are making 40 per cent less than the average worker.

Tiff Macklem, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, recently brought home the official storyline: The level of employment is now higher than it was before the crisis; jobs are mostly being created in the private sector, most are full-time and are emerging in industries that pay above-average wages.

These are upbeat metrics, but they are irrelevant to the one thing that matters most to Canadian households and a sustained, broad-based recovery: how much people get paid.

On that count, the data reveal that purchasing power is falling for most Canadians since the recovery began. The average wage paid to Canadians has not kept up with inflation. Real average wages declined by 0.6 per cent between 2009 — the trough of the recession — and 2011, from $23.11 to $22.99. That may not sound like much, but that’s because the bottom half of the wage distribution losing ground faster than the top half. See the attached chart. (Data are from the Labour Force Survey public use microdata file)

Some of the changes expected to be announced Thursday include:

-The age of retirement for new federal workers will rise to 65 from the current 60 years.

-The age at which MPs can collect their full pension will rise from 55 to 65, with an option to collect earlier if they take reduced benefits.

-Increased contributions for MPs will be phased in by 2017.

The precise date for MP pension changes is Jan. 1, 2016. There will be no change to the current eligibility for MP pensions of six years of service.

Mr. Kenney insisted that he intends to spell out to a parliamentary committee the criteria he would use to judge whether someone should be denied entry. He said it would be “an extraordinary power in very exceptional cases to deny admission, essentially when we believe a foreign national may come to Canada [and] promote hatred which could lead to violence.

“That’s really the sort of criteria we’re looking at,” he said. “We’re not looking at some broad, generalized power to prevent the admission of people to Canada whose political opinions we disagree with.”

In fact, his own office has done just that in the past. Federal Court of Canada Justice Richard Mosley ruled in 2010 that Mr. Kenney’s political staffers arranged to bar controversial British MP George Galloway from entering Canada in 2009 because they did not like his political views.

Border officials rushed an assessment that Mr. Galloway was inadmissible on national-security grounds because he had brought aid to Gaza, where Hamas, listed as a terror entity, was in power. But Justice Mosley found the decision had more to do with “antipathy to his political views” than national security.

New records obtained by CBC News are raising more questions about the election spending of Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Peter Penashue.

Documents in Penashue's Elections Canada file show he and his campaign racked up $24,711 in flights during the 2011 election campaign, but an airline in his riding wrote off most of that amount under an agreement that appears to have been made months after the election was over.

The cost of the flights that were written off would have put Penashue well over his spending limit. CBC News has previously reported that Penashue's campaign spending records show he was already nearly $4,000 over his limit.

It also appears Penashue still owes $15,000 plus interest on a loan provided by Innu Development Limited Partnership, a company run by two Innu communities to develop business partnerships. Penashue's brother-in-law, Paul Rich, was the CEO of IDLP before he stepped down after the community expressed outrage that Rich made more than $1 million in salary over two years.