Back to the Grind

The Bad: My visit to Ontario happened to coincide with weather so poor that it was (justifiably) named JimBobby's Outrage of the Week.

The Good: There are few (political) topics I find less interesting than the whole Gomery affair so it was nice that I missed all of the latest round of silliness.

I was struck by a couple of things on my first day back in B.C. (but luckily not by any of the incompetent Vancouver drivers who really have to be the least skilled in all of Canada):

1) When I first moved here, I was puzzled that Vancouver appeared to have two major daily papers, The Sun and the Province - both owned by the same company. Now I don't read either paper regularly since their web presence is laughable and the few times I have come across a paper copy I was uninspired to say the least (maybe I'm a Toronto snob when it comes to papers but I really do think the Toronto papers are much better).

But based on my observation of the front covers of the Sun and Province I have come to the conclusion that only one of them (the Sun) is actually a newspaper, and the other one (the Province) is really just the work of single photographer who hangs out at the local police precinct and writes up each day's most sensational crime in a big headline along with some quote from the relevant cops (Today's headline: "Eastside gunfight kills man, wounds another").

2) The other thing is that on my way to work I was reminded of the 'Safe Streets Act' which was passed a little while ago here in B.C. (similar legislation passed in Ontario in 2000). Readers may recall that I tend to judge legislation based on how its name compares to its intention. So the worst laws are those where the title of the act is the opposite of what the law is intended to accomplish, Ontario's 'Tenant Protection Act' being a prime example. Not as bad, but still unpromising are laws which invoke the mantra of 'safety' to provide cover for something which is not really about safety at all.

In this case, what the B.C. Liberals were after was really a 'Less Annoying Streets' act. I'm somewhat ambivalent about the law myself. On the one hand, it just seems like one more way for society to harass it's most downtrodden, desperate members, but on the other hand, the streets of downtown Vancouver can get pretty annoying at times, and certainly the actions targetted by the bill (aggressive panhandling, panhandling a captive audience, say at a bus stop) annoy the heck out of me.

Which, at long last, brings me to my point, which is that the most annoying thing on the streets right now is not panhandlers, it's the gauntlet of people making hopeful motions in my direction, obstructing my path to the bus, and indeed soliciting a captive audience at the bus stop, all in the hopes of fobbing off a free 'newspaper' on me in an attempt to position yet more advertising in front of my eyeballs. I couldn't help thinking to myself as I walked to the bus that, 'there ought to be a law' and then I remembered, there is.

So what does it all mean? Not much really, other than perhaps that I tend to be cranky the day after a vacation, when I realize how much stuff I have to catch up on...

That's All Very Well, But What do the CEO's Think?

The National Post is in fine form today, getting in a front page headline from the leader of the opposition American ambassador and also getting in one of their favourite items: a poll of CEO's which just happens to suit their political agenda (of course, since their agenda is to convince you the reader to do what CEO's want, these are fairly easy to come by - longtime readers will remember when I mentioned the Post asking CEO's opinions about pot).

As I recall, the National Post is supposedly undergoing some sort of revamp and, while I'm skeptical that the ever-money-losing Post was ever vamped in the first place, I'm always willing to help. Given that the Post considers it important for us to get the CEO-take on the issue of the day, perhaps the Post should adopt an Onion-style, 'What Do You Think' segment which could sit above the table of contents on the front page, where the six people asked are all CEO's.

Or perhaps it would make more sense for the Post to take advantage of our CEO's varying areas of expertise and get personal commentary from them in their particular areas of interest. I was thinking that John Roth, former CEO of Nortel could talk about business ethics and personal responsibility.

Meanwhile Frank Stronach could talk about democracy.

And I'm sure we could dig up someone from the Aspers to talk about media concentration and freedom of speech.

Plus, I'm guessing that George Eaton should have some free time to offer up advice on business strategy.

And of course Ted Rogers can talk about the virtues of free market competition and how it helped build his cable empire.

Now that I might actually pay to read.

The Conservative Media - Part 2

Since I'm on the topic of media bias, I thought I'd go back and take a look at the one good information source I know of regarding media bias in Canada: the Observatory on Media and Public Policy, based out of McGill University, which tracked reporting in 7 newspapers during last year's Federal election.

If you like going to the source, I recommend downloading the spreadsheet (link at the site) with the nuts and bolts of their analysis.

(Aside: If you'd prefer to read a really dull, myopic viewpoint of the election campaign as it unfolded, I recommend reading the discussion from their 'roundtable' of pundits.)
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During the campaign there were 2,113 articles written about the election in the 5 English newspapers studied (The Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun).

Of those 2113, 1,711 (81%) mentioned the Liberal party. Out of those 1,711, there were 34 (2%) with positive mentions of the Liberal party and 342 (20%) with negative mentions of the Liberals, giving a 10 to 1 ratio of negative mentions to positive.

Meanwhile, for the Conservative Party, the figures were 1592 (75%) total articles, including 82 (5%) positive mentions and 159 (10%) negative mentions, for a roughly 2:1 ratio of negative to positive.

The NDP garnered (4%) positive mentions and 7% negative mentions, while the Bloc had the most favourable(!) coverage of any party from the English language papers at 4% positive, 5% negative (although they were only mentioned in 15% of stories).

Of course there may be any number of explanations for these results including the media rooting for the underdog, the media following poll shifts, a general unwillingness to praise the governing party, poorly/well run campaigns and so on. Still, it seems hard to say that media bias was anything but harmful to the Liberals.

It's interesting to look at the numbers by newspaper:

The Calgary Herald mentioned the Liberals in 76% of its election articles, with 0%(!) containing positive mentions, and 23% containing negative mentions (note: they did have one article with a positive mention, but it still rounded down to 0%).
Meanwhile they mentioned the Conservatives in 77% of their articles, of which 8% had positive mentions and 4% had negative mentions.

Globe and Mail: Mentioned Liberals (85%), positive 1%, negative 17%
Mentioned Conservatives (75%), positive 2%, negative 11%

National Post: Mentioned Liberals (81%), positive 1%, negative 35%(!)
Mentioned Conservatives (69%), positive 13%, negative 4%

Toronto Star: Mentioned Liberals (85%), positive 4%, negative 15%
Mentioned Conservatives (79%), positive 2%, negative 19%

Vancouver Sun: Mentioned Liberals (77%), positive 1%, negative 15%
Mentioned Conservatives (76%), positive 4%, negative 10%

Together, the Herald, Post, Sun and Globe combined to write 1305 articles about the Liberals with a grand total of 11 including positive mentions. Meanwhile the Post and Herald alone combined for 55 articles with positive mentions of the Conservatives.

So what does it all mean? - well, not a whole lot without having more elections to study, but next time you hear someone say how the media were out to get the Conservatives you may want to have a little chuckle. Also, you can see just how far out in bias land the Herald and the Post are while the Globe and Sun were closer to the Centre (although still anti-Liberal). Of all the papers, the Star was the closest to having equally negative coverage for both the Liberals and Conservatives, but it did have a slight pro-Liberal lean (vs. the Conservatives).

There's lots more info in the spreadsheet such as a breakdown by issue ('Accountability' got by far the most press, followed by Health Care, Social Issues, Tax Cuts and finally International Issues), a breakdown by type of coverage (52% horserace, 43% issues, 4% other - how sad is that?) and a daily tracking of all the articles (not to mention the raw data itself in case you feel like doing your own analysis.)

If only there were more of this kind of data available...

Right Wing Media Bias, The Irony of it All

Great column (behind the subscriber wall) by Lawrence Martin in the Globe today.

He starts by contrasting the media reaction to the recent Missile Defense pullout to both the media reaction in the 1980's when Mulroney said no to Star Wars, and to popular opinion (which is against the Missile Defense plan).

"The media, to the tune of about 90 per cent, ripped the Martin government to pieces over its decision to reject Washington's missile-defence plan. The people went the other way; they favoured the decision in polls by a 20-per-cent margin, which, in political terms, is a landslide.

Flashback to the mid-1980s. Like today's Liberals, the Mulroney government said no to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars. The people applauded and, unlike today, there was no collective media hissy fit."

This leads him into a convincing argument that, while the Canadian population remains largely centre-left, our newsprint media has moved well to the right.

"The journalism culture underwent dramatic change in the mid-1990s when the country's biggest newspaper chain, centrist-leaning Southam, changed hands. The media empire is now owned by CanWest Global, which makes no secret of its pro-American, conservative tilt."

and

"Another big change from the days of liberal media came with the continuing expansion of the conservative tabloid Sun chain to become Canada's second-biggest newspaper group."

furthermore,

"National newspapers are major agenda-setters, both for print media and television. Canada has two. One, the National Post, is firmly on the right; the other, The Globe and Mail, is slenderly conservative.

The portsiders can always boast of having the Toronto Star. But even it pummelled the Martin government on missile defence, and some see the paper as moving to the centre. At Maclean's, a former editor of the National Post is now taking charge. At Policy Options, formerly a very liberal magazine, two former cronies of Mr. Mulroney run the show."

Martin really nails how the right-wing papers are out of touch with the population in their 'don't make dad angry or we'll all get grounded' coverage of Canada-U.S. affairs,

"On missile defence, the media tone was remarkably hostile. The issue was examined not so much on the basis of what Canadians think but on what the Bush administration would think. It was as if — after 138 years of existence — we were still strapped down to a client-state mentality wherein the driving imperative was approval from a higher authority."

So I'm wondering. Do people with centre-left views just prefer to read right wing papers? Or does a vastly higher percentage of right wing folks buy newspapers vs. centre-left folks?

Or maybe there's a market out there for more centre-left journalism (perhaps it's not so surprising the Star has the biggest circulation in the country) but the newspapers are willing to sacrifice the profits they could make by filling it because it doesn't suit their owner's agenda - which would be more than a little ironic since one of the main agendas they're pushing is that government shouldn't interfere in markets because pursuit of profit leads to the greatest good rather than pursuit of principle.

Time to Pack it In

After reading Norman Spector's latest comments on STV in the Vancouver Sun, I have come to the conclusion that it is (past) time for him to depart from the column writing business.

Let's start with the outright lie with which he concludes his column, saying that STV is "a voting system used by only one Commonwealth country"

The Sun should really publish a correction on this one, since clearly Australia and New Zealand are members of the Commonwealth and equally clearly both use STV for some elections (not to mention Scotland and Northern Ireland). I'm not sure why Spector feels that, on top of his pathetically transparent attempt to exclude Ireland (which uses STV) from discussion, he needs to lie outright as well.

But that's far from the only laughable part of this column. Now when you read the following line, "Proponents of STV claim that only politicians and political hacks favour the existing system", what do you expect is coming next?

I think you'd expect to be given an example of someone who favours the existing system, but isn't a politician or a political hack. But no, here's what comes next, "As I look at prominent names in the debate, however, I see the Bob Williams faction of the NDP -- represented by former cabinet minister Andrew Petter -- supporting STV. I see Moe Sihota -- representing the less ideological Dave Barrett wing -- opposing it. And I see a similar radical/moderate split on the right."

So you see, it isn't just politicians and political hacks who support the existing system, Moe Sihota, representing the less ideological Dave Barrett wing of the NDP, supports it too. And it's the same on the right!

It gets better. Spector's main point seems to be that, under STV, the Liberals wouldn't have decided to spend more money in the budget in the hopes of getting elected. He posits that, "STV would fragment our two big-tent, centrist parties and force politicians to compete for votes on the ends of the political spectrum." and that, "B.C. politics are not polarized. It's our society that's polarized -- along multiple fault lines. In fact, our political system is one of the few institutions that keep it all together." So you've got the argument right, having more than two parties would cause polarization - I don't agree, but at least it's a coherent point.

But further down, Norman backs his point up by saying that we don't want to become like Malta (which uses STV), since Malta is, "a country that's infamous for polarized politics." The thing is, Malta is also famous as the only jurisdiction which uses STV and which still has a two-party structure. So the infamously polarized Malta has a two party system, just like we do now, and Spector is basically contradicting his argument that a two-party system is the recipe for non-polarization.

There's more. Spector also claims that, "To date, proponents of the new voting system have been unwilling or unable to explain clearly where my vote and your votes would go after we mark our ballots."

Now the unwilling part is absurd. It is the Yes side which has a strong interest in explaining the STV system as well and as clearly as possible and a visit to any Yes-vote supporting site will reveal a strong emphasis on doing exactly that. For Yes supporters, ignorance (like Spector's) is our enemy.

As for the unable part, I doubt that Spector has conducted a poll, so one of two things must be true:

Either a) Spector has failed to understand how the vote counting will work - which makes the fact that he has written a number of columns criticizing the impact of the new system seem a little premature to say the least or

b) Spector understands it himself, but he is concerned for the little people in B.C. who don't have his intelligence to figure out this complicated system (which the Irish have been using since before WWII).

There's other nutty stuff as well, such as insinuating that STV will lead to a ban on abortion in one paragraph and then calling STV supporters an 'unholy alliance' (he seems to miss the irony) only a couple of paragraphs later.


Aside from all this, if Spector is going to comment on electoral reform, shouldn't he at least make a token effort to address all the flaws such as the lack of fairness and lack of power for voters which have driven us to consider dropping our current system? Or does he feel that if he keeps repeating his lie that 'only one country in the Commonwealth uses STV' like a mantra, then that is argument enough?

You put it all together and what you get is one of the most poorly written columns I've ever read, and one which the editors of the Sun should be embarrassed to have printed in their paper.

The Bad, the Ugly and the Whatever Comes Next After Ugly

The National Post had a big headline the other day which read, 15 years of stagnation: TD blames debt and taxes as take-home pay flatlines and was based on a study done by TD Economics.

Personally, I recommend that, any time you see a newspaper article which makes reference to some study, you either go read the study¹ and then read the article, or just skip the article because, from what I've seen so far, you're likely to get a pretty distorted view if you rely on one of the media's 'study interpretation' pieces for information.²

So let's look at the study first and then the Post interpretation afterwards.

The TD study, titled, "IN SEARCH OF WELL-BEING
Are Canadians slipping down the economic ladder?" tries to address the question of whether Canadian standards of living are improving or not.

I wasn't two paragraphs in before it became clear that in the author's minds, well-being = standard of living = after-tax income, but we'll save the whole issue of whether you can measure your well-being by the size of your pay cheque for another day.

The heart of the report is that while GDP per capita has gone up 25.5% since 1989, after-tax income per capita has only gone up 9.3% over that stretch. Furthermore, since a greater percentage of the population is working now than in 1989, the gain in after-tax income per worker is only 3.6%.

First off, the choice of dates is a little suspect since 1989 was right at the end of a long boom and right before the start of a recession. When calculating % changes over time, the choice of starting and ending points can make a huge difference so it's important to choose your dates impartially (i.e. for economic analysis the start and end points should be at the same point in the economic cycle).

Secondly, I'm not sure it makes sense to use the 3.6% figure. Obviously the people who have a job now but didn't in 1989 have made a huge gain in their after tax income so why should we ignore them when determining if Canadians have made progress in their after-tax income over the last 15 years?

The study argues that more jobs isn't progress because it means less leisure time, but obviously nobody forced any of these extra people to take a job - they had a choice between leisure time and working and they chose to work.

Anyway, the next question is what about the difference between 25.5% growth in GDP/capita and 9.3% growth in after-tax income. Since GDP is a measure of total income for the country, any growth that didn't go to people would have to either go to corporations or to the government³. While the study notes this, it doesn't say anything further about the change in corporate income over this period - which seems pretty odd. Maybe corporations caused some of this gap and maybe they didn't, but if figuring out the source of the gap is the point of your study, wouldn't you want to look into it?

Disregarding the (potential) corporate factor, the study says that the difference is due to increased taxes. Of course, as the study notes, increased taxes won't reduce your standard of living, it just means that some of your income is being spent by the government you elected instead of by you. The tax money spent on the military increases my standard of living by keeping me safe, taxes given to education increase my standard of living by allowing me to get an education, tax money given to health care - well, you get the picture.

As the study points out, most of the tax increases were due to bracket creep (tax brackets not keeping up with inflation) and increased CPP premiums. For some reason, while the study says,

"Up until the mid-1980s, the federal government fully indexed tax brackets, but then opted for a looser interpretation from 1986 to 2000 applying indexation only to the portion of inflation that was above 3 percent,"

they don't explicitly point out that the brackets were fully indexed again in 2000 so this is no longer really an issue.

Also, while the study points out that, "CPP premiums were hiked from 3.6 per cent in 1986 to 9.9 per cent by 2003", they fail to mention that 9.9 was designed to be a long term steady-state rate, with automatic stabilizers built in to keep it from going higher⁴ - so CPP increases should no longer be a problem going forward either.

Then the study pulls out their least convincing line:

"Normally a rise in the tax burden would not automatically be associated with reduced economic well being if it were used to finance more current services or to invest in the future. But this is not the case here. The rise in the tax burden is the price society is now paying for past government deficits and policy shortcomings. Between 1975 and 1996, the consolidated government (federal, provincial and municipal) consistently ran deficits, swelling to as much as 8 per cent of GDP in 1992 and 1993. In that two-decade span, Canadians enjoyed $0.90 to $0.97 in program spending (total spending minus interest on public debt) for every dollar of revenue that was put into government coffers. Not so anymore. Only $0.76 to $0.84 of every dollar goes to program spending, with the rest of the money going towards interest costs and relatively modest payments against the accumulated debt."

[emphasis added on the dates to point out that this problem has been fixed too]

How they decided that paying off your debts and paying the interest on them so as not to declare bankruptcy doesn't contribute to your economic well being I don't know. Personally, I spent the latter half of last year saving money to pay off a debt I owed from my school days. I paid it off over Christmas and I definitely feel that my economic well-being has improved by not owing that money any more. And if there's one thing that I would take as a sign of economic non well-being, it would be declaring bankruptcy cause I didn't make my interest payments.

Still, their point that past (pre-current Liberal) governments screwed us over (albeit they were forced to deal with a severe economic dislocation due to the oil crisis) and that debt repayment should remain a priority is well taken.

After this, the study, assuming it has proved its point switches gears to ask what we can do about this problem. Here's their proposed solution: In order to make more money, Canadians need to earn more money (this is known in economic circles as increasing productivity).

In order to help us earn more money the government should:

1) Spend more money on things like education and infrastructure, which help us earn more.
2) Cut taxes to create more incentives for us to earn more
3) Keep reducing the debt.

Ah yes, spend more⁵, tax less and pay down the debt - why didn't I think of that? - and no, this study was not written by Dalton McGuinty.


By carefully choosing what to emphasize or downplay, the study presents a narrative that high taxes are preventing Canadians from improving our standard of living.

But what it actually tells you if you read between the lines, is that previous governments put us in a hole by creating deficits, underfunding the pension plan and allowing bracket creep. Luckily, the federal Liberal party has solved all of these problems since it took office. Unfortunately, solving these problems involves paying for our past mistakes so we don't feel like we're doing as well as we are because some of our increased income is going towards reducing our debt and refinancing our pension plan.

In conclusion, the study figures that, given that we are now on the right track, it makes sense to continue the balanced Liberal approach of paying down the debt and using the money freed up for a mixture of tax cuts and spending targetted towards productivity improvements.

It's kind of sad that, rather than trying to show Canadians how their financial situation really is improving even if it doesn't seem like it, the article reinforces the inaccurate perception among people that high taxes are keeping them from making any progress.

As a final comment, note that the study never answers the question in their title, "Are Canadians slipping down the Economic Ladder?" - maybe because the authors realize (deep down) that the answer is no (with one exception which I'll mention further down).

OK, enough about the study itself, what about the Post article.

They start off by saying that, "The report urges the federal government to cut taxes and redirect spending toward policies that would boost productivity and incomes."

Of course, you've read the study so you know it is really recommending more spending towards policies that would boost productivity, lower taxes and debt reduction.

Next, the Post ignores the 9.3% average gain/capita and only mentions the 3.6% gain/worker.

With their eye for idiocy, they catch the study's weakest point,

"Canadians have been getting less bang for their taxpayer buck as more of their taxes have been directed toward paying off the national debt rather than funding programs."

I'm not really sure what their point is here - that we shouldn't pay down the debt? That building it up in the first place was a bad idea? That having to pay the interest is annoying?

A little further down, they bring in some new information, namely that,

"A survey of 1,283 Canadians between Dec. 6 and 8 last year found their optimism about the economy was at a 12-year high, but only 23% said their own financial situation was improving.
The survey, by Pollara Inc., showed 34% felt they have been falling behind financially, while 42% felt they have only been holding their own, and their incomes treading water. Coincidentally, the numbers had not changed much over the past 15 years, according to Pollara."

Of course, a relevant thing to mention here would be that, for most Canadians, their income isn't rising as fast as the average income. This is because a disproportionate share of income gains are going to the top 10% of income earners⁶. So a lot of the people surveyed are right that their situation hasn't improved, but it's not because of high taxes, it's because most of the gains from economic growth are being captured by a small segment of the population. Cuts to progressive income taxes would actually make this problem worse - not better. The Post doesn't mention this.

And of course, people are unlikely to factor their improved position with regard to the debt or the CPP into their assessment of their own financial situation (even though it will benefit them down the road).

One surprising thing a little later in the article is when the Post mentions that Don Drummond, one of the study's co-authors, was actually, "assistant and associate deputy minister of finance under Paul Martin", which makes his downplaying (in the study) of what must have been some of his own accomplishments kind of puzzling.

Anyway, the Post then goes on to quote in full just about every word the study has to say relating to how taxes have gone up over the years. Then they quote Drummond as saying,

"I thought there was an implicit contract from government that the tax burden was high because we had to pay for those excesses and they were going to quickly bring down that debt burden," he said. "But... since about 1997, they decided to use a lot of the proceeds from the high tax load to ramp up spending."

It's a nice story, but not a true one⁷. The truth is that the government both allowed taxes to continue rising and drastically reduced spending in order to balance the budget. Once the budget was balanced, there have been both tax cuts (minor tax cuts in 1998 and 1999, a significant tax cut in 2000 and numerous further, smaller tax cuts since then) and increased spending. And when you look into it, the only tax which was increased significantly in the last 10 years is the CPP contributions which have no impact on the deficit/debt at all.

The Post points out that, "Federal program spending has been rising at about 7% annually in recent years, way above the 2% inflation rate". But notice how they don't compare it to what it was in 1989 or the total change since the Liberals took power or give us any growth rates on that figure (I would but I don't know what they are) - pretty low though I'd expect). According to this chart from the federal budget (scroll about halfway down): total government program spending (all levels of government) is now somewhere around 35% of GDP, down from over 40% in 1992.

To give them credit, the Post really does save the best for last, ending their article with a quote from Jack Mintz, who "is professor of taxation at the University of Toronto's Joseph L. Rotman School of Management and president of the C.D. Howe Institute, an economics think-tank", but who isn't connected to the study in any way. According to the Post,

"Mr. Mintz suggested a cut in business investment taxes, the third-highest among the world's 20 major industrialized economies, behind only China and Germany."

Yes, that's the Post's solution to stagnating wages for average Canadians - cut taxes for business. Hard to believe. You have to like how they snuck that in, even in an article which was about a study which didn't mention business taxes once⁸.

So there you have it, some economists wrote a study which demonstrated the wisdom and intelligence of the economic management of the Liberal party in correcting some of the mistakes of the past and which showed how people's income gains were showing up more in the improved financial situation of the government and the CPP rather than in their after-tax income.

Then the study authors twisted their own work to downplay any policy changes undertaken by the current government, to exaggerate their suggestion that high taxes were restraining income growth and to promote the exact same policies being undertaken by the government right now as if they were a recommendation for a change in course.

The National Post skewed things even further by taking out what balance and context the study contained and by throwing in random quotes not connected to the study at all, leaving us with the impression that across the board tax cuts are the only solution to our economic 'stagnation'. Meanwhile, the best course clearly seems to be continuing the balanced approach of spending, debt repayment and tax cuts which the Liberals are already doing.

Times like this always make me wonder how much of this is incompetence / ideological blindness and how much is an ends-justifies-the-means deal where people know what they are saying is misleading and likely to make people support policies which aren't in their own interests, but they do it anyway because they feel it serves some higher ethical purpose (e.g. lower taxes). Either way it's a pretty irresponsible game to be playing, if you ask me.

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¹ For some reason the Post doesn't give the link to the study, even in the online version of the story. I can't imagine someone Blogging a post of that length about a study and not providing a link to it, especially given that the entire study is available online.

² This goes doubletriple for the National Post. In fact you're probably better off not reading the Post at all. So am I of course, but sometimes I feel compelled to either mock them or dispel some of their lies.

³At least I can't think of anywhere else it could go - if I missed something let me know.

⁴See my post on Social Security / CPP here or see this report.

⁵ The authors may argue that they proposed redirecting spending, not increasing it, but since the only thing they proposed in terms of cutting was reducing the growth in spending on health (which is already underfunded, and politically impossible to cut spending on at the moment), I didn't take their spending 'redirecting' rhetoric too seriously.

⁶ From Statscan's daily newsletter, for May 13, 2003,

"Incomes of families in the bottom half of the income distribution showed little or no improvement through the 1990s. However, the 10% of families with the highest incomes experienced substantial gains."

⁷ The Federal Annual Financial Report, while obviously choosing their graphs to suit their message, nonetheless is a pretty good read for figuring out how Federal finances have changed over the last 15 years.

⁸ Not to mention that the Federal government is still phasing in the corporate tax cuts (reduction in tax rate from 28% to 21%) they brought in for the 2000 budget or that they announced a plan in the last budget to phase out the Federal capital tax on business as well.

A good summary (from a pro-government point of view) of changes in taxation since 2000, can be found here.

About 2/3 of the way down they talk about the international context around corporate tax rates. Personally I wouldn't put too much stock in their talk about the U.S. rate of 40% since the U.S. tax code has so many holes, I doubt many American firms pay anywhere near that amount on average, but the rest is pretty good reading.

Last Word

Turns out my suspicion was justified, loopy was intended as a synonym for whacko. Furthermore, my thesauras.com verdict was appealed to the supreme court of word-cases, the Canadian Oxford which apparently lists crazy as a synonym for both whacko and loopy. So if we assume that transitivity applies to synonymity (if a is a synonym of b, and b is a synonym of c, then a and c are synonyms) then he appears to have a case.

Final (tongue-in-cheek) verdict, Ian Urquhart may not know anything about electoral reform, but he definitely has a good sense of humour.

Tomorrow, I plan to turn my attention to something new for a while, assuming my back pain doesn't cause my brain to shrink too much (subscription required, if you absolutely must read the rest of the article) in the meantime. Boy, they're really struggling for news over at the National Post these days. But I guess the concerns of places like the Ukraine pale in comparison to such startling stories as violence in video games, mailmen afraid of big violent dogs, and banks making record profits. All of which are on the post website as I write this.

Slow news day

I see today's big story on the cover of the National Post is "CEO's Fear Reefer Madness", staring out from the golden newspaper boxes in 50 point font*

I guess if no news is good news, then that's good news. In the interests of fairness and balance, I'll let you know if I ever see a Post headline which reads, "Pot Users fear CEO intolerance" (or even "Citizens fear CEO corruption, arrogance, overpay, and use of financial clout and media connections to try and influence public policy for their own benefit" although likely they'd have to scale down the font a little on that one).

* This is just a wild guess, I am not a font expert