Jerkin' the #s

Again, haven't blogged in ages, but haven't written a column for the paper in ages either. So I whipped one off for today's paper based on a new report that used some serious statistical trickery to promote the ol' quit-taxing-us line. Tedious.

The news story I wrote on the report is here: http://www.canada.com/chilliwacktimes/news/story.html?id=4b26b5ed-2c15-42c5-b19d-bec5142b8f2b

And here's my column:

Manipulating the numbers

Paul J. Henderson, The Times

Friday, June 06, 2008

There are many expressions that make fun of statistics as a means of accessing truths, starting with one attributed to Stephen Leacock: "In earlier times they had no statistics, and so they had to fall back on lies."

The use of statistics is essential to gauge how the economy is doing, how all manner of public and private agencies and departments are being accountable, and just what's going on in our world.

I want to know that Statistics Canada exists—heck, I even worked for them at one painful time—to gather as much information about the country as possible for positive use.

Make no mistake, statistics have a definite value in many, many ways, but so do guns and knives and pharmaceuticals. We all know how things can go wrong quickly with those.

The recent Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) report on municipal spending, while valuable in some regard as a carrot/stick to municipalities to "keep their pencils sharp," as a city staffer put it to me, really is an example of the manipulation of numbers to further an agenda.

It was business professor Aaron Levenstein who said that statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

The CFIB report selects some presumptuous starting points, cherrypicks data, and concludes that municipal spending in Chilliwack—and in virtually every city—is out of control. But to suggest that cities should be run precisely the same as fiscally tight households is beyond a stretch, it's ridiculous.

As the expression attributed to Andrew Lang goes, with this report the CFIB uses statistics like a drunken man uses lampposts—for support rather than for illumination.

Municipalities provide fire, police, water, sewer and many other services essential to everyday life. I don't want to shatter Mayor Clint Hames perception that he gets "pounded" by the media, and at the risk of appearing as a cheerleader for the city, I think the city does a pretty darned good job.

With $729 per capita in operating expenditures, Chilliwack is second lowest only to Surrey—a city with a huge business tax base—in providing services. In addition, Chilliwack has no debt and yet has managed to plan for and complete a number of major capital projects without going further in to debt. Prospera Centre and the Landing Leisure Centre just to name a couple in the past, with the Evans Road Flyover and the new cultural centre on the horizon.

It's easy to complain we all pay too much tax, but, again, as the city's director of finance put it, rarely do residents complain they want the city to do less. But if the CFIB had its way, the provincial government would legislate spending caps on municipal governments, and while maybe there are many irresponsible ones that need to be reigned in, a spending cap would eliminate a number of essential service expansions as well as important projects that, lo and behold, CFIB members benefit greatly from.

In the end, the CFIB report is useful so that we can all have the discussion about frugality and fiscal responsibility, no doubt. But as Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Having said that, I think what this CFIB report illustrates is really best put by Homer Simpson: "You can use statistics to prove anything, 40 per cent of all people know that."