PC Leader Jamie Baillie's election promise to hold power rates at current levels came in a position paper that included the following unsourced graph, purporting to show that something called "energy costs to rate payers," measured in units it did not explain, have increased by 27 percent since 2009: Wow, that certainly looks shocking! Contrarian is no statistician, and my graphic skills are tenuous, but I read Darrell Huff's classic How to Lie with Statistics shortly after it came out in 1954, and Chapter 5, "The Gee Whiz Graph," stuck with me. Of the persuasive power of graphs, Huff had this advice...

07 August, 2013

I've criticized the NDP's carbon subsidy (here, here, and here,), but I understand the value of keeping campaign promises, even dumb ones. In my contrary view, public cynicism about politicians is so deep, it threatens to destroy the minimal level of public trust democracy needs to survive. This may be why the Tories and the Parliamentary Press Gallery have been so successful at drumming up absurd faux-outrage at the prospect of a fall election. So even as two of the Dexter government's promises (keeping all rural emergency rooms open and using tax rebates to encourage electricity consumption) make me shudder, I...

29 September, 2009