Statistics Canada said on Friday the biggest job losses were in Ontario, the manufacturing heartland and home to the country's auto industry, where the global economic downturn has forced layoffs.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.3 per cent from 6.2 per cent in October. Analysts surveyed by Reuters had expected 25,000 job losses in November and a jobless rate of 6.4 per cent.

The Canadian dollar fell against the US dollar immediately after the report, slipping to C$1.2847 to the US dollar, or 77.84 US cents, from C$1.2826 previously.

'The great reckoning for Canadian workers begins,' said Mr Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

'Unfortunately, I think this is the start of a wave of job losses in Canada,' he said.

The bad news came the morning after Prime Minister Stephen Harper suspended Parliament until late January to defuse an opposition revolt over his handling of the economic crisis.

The three opposition parties have joined forces and vow to replace Mr Harper's minority Conservative government as soon as possible, accusing him of partisan jabs aimed at hurting the centre-left parties in Parliament a a time when they say he should be delivering a quick stimulus package and auto sector bailout to mitigate the effects of a recession.

*Rate cuts

The gloomy report cements market expectations that the Bank of Canada will cut its key overnight lending rate next Tuesday by 50 basis points.

The central bank has reduced its key overnight lending rate by 225 basis points since December 2007 to 2.25 per cent and has signalled its intention to ease further.

In the first 11 months of 2008, employment increased 0.8 per cent, representing a job gain of 133,000.

But the severity of the November data, the weakest in 26 years following three straight months of surprisingly resilient job numbers, likely reflects the start of a recession in the fourth quarter, as widely expected.

The decline in jobs, expressed as a percentage of employed people, is the ninth biggest on record, Statscan officials said.

The province of Ontario suffered the steepest decline and its unemployment rate jumped to 7.1 per cent. Factory job losses in Ontario totaled 42,000 while the net employment drop in the sector nationwide was 38,000.

Hourly wages of permanent employees rose 4.7 per cent in November from a year earlier, up from 4.2 per cent in October. -- REUTERS