Recognition of the financial realities of the BC provincial government and the discipline to manage the province’s finances responsibly – within the constraints posed by the province’s income [revenue] – are key skills needed by any party leader to avoid imploding the provinces finances and economy in the short term and placing severe, negative limits on the province’s future economic health in both intermediate and long terms.
Clearly Mr. de Jong’s experience is an enormous asset in terms of effectively and responsibly managing the province’s finances. A task that will only become more difficult, especially in terms of politically popularity, as the costs of our profligate financial behaviours over the past decades come due.
However, those decades of experience clearly serve to narrow Mr. de Jong’s perspective as evidenced by his own words when he speaks of the need to re-energize [give fresh vitality, enthusiasm, or impetus to] the Liberal Party.
While reading the Abbotsford News story about the 20 extra rental supplements the BC government is adding to the supplements already available in Abbotsford, I found myself wondering what Abbotsford City Council is really doing with all the funds it claims it is spending on cleanup and other costs of dealing with the homeless.
If you wonder why we have a growing epidemic of drug overdoses, reading the Abbotsford News editorial on the need to reduce the death toll from the overdoses will provide enlightenment.
Perhaps the phrase ‘homeless count’ causes people to assume that the purpose – and therefore design – of the homeless count is to count all the homeless and it is that erroneous assumption that leads to the utterance of utter nonsense such as:
“Earlier this year, a homeless count found a dramatic increase in homelessness across the region from three years ago, including a 79 per cent increase in Abbotsford.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Mark Twain
Twain attributed the quote to British politician Disraeli but researchers have concluded that the phrase originally appeared in 1895 in an article by Leonard H. Courtney. Ironically Mark Twain is credited with saying that “it isn’t what we don’t know that causes problems but what we know for sure – that ain’t so”.
The fault lies not with the science of statistics but with what we know about statistics that ain’t so. .
