This past week, CBC DayBreak North introduced its political panel of impartial pundits for the provincial election.
Much to my surprise, one of the pundits was my old colleague and fellow columnist Bruce Strachan. If Bruce is impartial when it comes to politics, well, then I guess I must be as well.
Sure enough, Bruce didn't disappoint. Much of what he said was trying to spin the election in favour of the BC Liberals. Indeed, he didn't even mention the local NDP candidates or any other NDP candidate by name.
But that is to be expected. What I found more interesting was that he was using his gut - or should I say "Gut" - feelings in quoting statistics.
For example, he made the claim that both British Columbia and Prince George saw a population decline during the 1990s. This claim was quickly refuted by the host, Betsy Trumpener as CBC is running a series of reality checks on claims by both parties and this is one that they have looked at.
But that wasn't the only claim that Bruce made. And more to the point, he kept talking about the 1990s as if the whole decade could be characterized by one or two bad years.
This seems to be the strategy that the BC Liberals are focusing on. They are hoping that we all recall when unemployment spiked locally to 17 per cent and forget that for most of the decade, our unemployment rate was consistent with the Canadian average.
Indeed, for much of the early 1990s, B.C. had an unemployment rate that was below the national average. We didn't suffer the mini-recession that devastated the manufacturing sectors back east as a consequence of the ill-conceived "Free Trade Agreement" and its successor.
And people were flocking to British Columbia. Our population increased from 3,469,000 in 1992 to 4,076,000 in 2001 or 607,000 more people living in our province. That population increase had a significant impact on employment.
It is not the whole reason that our local unemployment spiked. There are many, many factors involved including the never-ending softwood lumber dispute with the United States, the collapse of the nascent Asian market, over-capacity in the system, etcetera.
But generally speaking the unemployment rate can be affected in two ways - by the number of people that are working and by the number of people in the labour force that are looking for work. The latter is the "participation rate".
In a simplified approach, if the participation rate is 75 per cent in a population of 100, then 75 people are working or looking for work. If only 70 of them have jobs, then the 5 people are unemployed and the unemployment rate is 6.7 per cent.
If 2 of them get jobs then the unemployment rate drops to 4 per cent. But pretty much the same thing happens if 2 people stop looking for jobs. With only 73 people participating in the labour force and 70 employed, the unemployment rate drops to 4.1 per cent.
This is why reporting "unemployment rates" is a tricky business. The simple percentages that we are given don't really tell the whole story. Increased immigration means more people are participating and there is always a lag between immigration and employment.
That said, it isn't the 1990s where immigration was a problem. It is right now. This past decade has seen the number of immigrants drop dramatically. And as a consequence, Minister Bell has said that we are going to have labour shortages in key areas over the next 10 years.
The question that really should be asked is why, if British Columbia has been doing so well for the past 10 years, don't people want to move here?
But this painting of the 1990s as "the bad old times" is a direct appeal to the "Gut" by the BC Liberals. They are trying to avoid their own record by bringing up the bogeyman. The 1990s were bad - you should be afraid - we don't want to go back there.
Ironically, an objective and impartial viewer might find that this past 12 years, with the BC Liberals in power really hasn't been a whole lot better.
I am not an impartial viewer so take what I say with a grain of salt, but consider the following. In the 1980s our GDP increased by 28.3 per cent under a Social Credit Government. In the 1990s, our GDP increased by 28 per cent under the NDP. And in the 2000s, our GDP increased by 21.1 per cent under the BC Liberals.
Given those numbers - and anyone can look them up either at StatsCan or BC Stats if they desire to - is it any wonder that the BC Liberals want you thinking with your "Gut" and not your "Head"?
I tend to analyze politics with my "Head" and not my "Gut" because my gut feeling isn't always right. In this case, however, I know that BC Liberal gut feeling is way off.
