Standard Operating Procedure

On the Right, lying has become standard operating procedure. Jim Stanford writes:

The PR flacks working in the Conservative Party’s media war room are nothing if not zealous. They regularly issue inflammatory, offensive, and often just-plain-false statements and social media posts.

As part of their broader strategy to discredit conventional journalism, the Conservatives’ spinners don’t hesitate to post fake news. And usually their misleading missives evade significant blowback. The more inflammatory the better, in their books: their main purpose is to harvest names and digital contact information from people who sign a petition, or take some other token act of digital resistance, against the Trudeau regime.

Occasionally the mainstream political and journalism worlds pay more sustained and crucial attention to this propaganda. For example, the party’s recent nationalistic ‘Our Home’ video had to be pulled after it was found to contain bizarre stock footage—including Russian fighter jets, a Venezuelan sunset, and Ukrainian schoolchildren.

They have a standard menu of lies:

Of course, complaints about the economy, inflation, and taxes are a mainstay of Conservative rage-farming. But in this arena, too, the adolescent overreach of their war room can get them into trouble. An example is a recent ‘X’ post from leader Pierre Poilievre, trying to exploit a recent Statistics Canada report that showed a decline in median real household incomes in Canada in 2022.

The post claimed that in 2022 prices were rising ‘3 times faster’ than incomes, that ‘wages’ lagged far behind inflation (2.5 per cent versus 6.8 per cent), and that as a result Canadians suffered a ‘pay cut’ of 4.3 per cent. The post was illustrated with a striking high-contrast graph that conveyed a sense of emergency in living standards.

But Stanford immediately spotted the ruse:

As someone who makes their living studying wages, prices, and living standards, I immediately saw that Poilievre’s post was far off-base. And so I posted my own ‘X’ thread, complete with a revised chart, to correct the record.

The first and most obvious issue was the time frame Poilievre chose. The Statistics Canada report was based on a detailed census of income tax returns, which naturally take some time to compile and analyze (hence we receive their 2022 report in mid-2024). But there is much more recent data showing up-to-date trends in wages and prices.

Indeed, within hours of Poilievre’s post, Statistics Canada released its latest data on consumer price inflation: year-over-year inflation slowed in the 12 months ending in July to 2.5 per cent. That’s the slowest in 40 months (ever since inflation first accelerated after the end of COVID lockdowns in 2021), and well within the Bank of Canada’s target range for inflation (they aim for 2 per cent, plus-or-minus 1 percentage point).

Meanwhile, labour market data released by Statistics Canada a few days earlier had confirmed that wages are growing at a strong clip: up 5.2 per cent in the same 12-month period. This made for an easy update to Poilievre’s chart:

Unlike the Conservatives, I listed the statistical sources used in the graph. Needless to say, my chart tells a very different story: hourly wages (measured by the labour force survey) have grown twice as fast as prices (measured by the CPI) in the last year. Real ‘pay,’ adjusted for inflation, has increased strongly: up 2.6 per cent in one year.

Justin is well past his best before date. But do we really want to replace him with Poilievre?

Image: X