Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[BigThief]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

For the latter, "Mixed for factual reporting due to false and misleading claims regarding global warming" says to me that you should be very skeptical of claims they make regarding climate change. For anything else (the other half of the 'mixed' rating), hold it in uncertainty until you can verify. Any technical or scientific claim deserves verification. Fraser Institute also hasn't failed a fact-check in the past five years (as of their page update in Dec 2024); this isn't blanket approval, but definitely runs counter to the idea that they cannot be trusted on any subject, ever.

If an organization is willing to mislead (lie) about one topic I fail to see why I should trust them on another. There's many other right of center organizations that are reputable, The Fraser Institutions continually fudges numbers to their agendas favour. If I want a right wing group to feed me loaded information I'll go to Franco Terrazzano and the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. They're pretty scummy and bias but at least they don't pretend they're not.

[Cain]

Originally Posted by Ironhorse

As is importing 100s of thousands new Canadians each year. Almost a perfect storm.

I don't disagree with you in that it certainly doesn't help, but I think immigration is a drop in the bucket (especially when you consider our birth rate is well below replacement rate) compared to the general aging of our society.

Unfortunately it is as Cliff said...we can look to make things more efficient all we like, but the tough reality is that as we all live longer, we need more and more of these services over a longer period of time. We need to be funding healthcare more than we are.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by BigThief

If an organization is willing to mislead (lie) about one topic I fail to see why I should trust them on another. There's many other right of center organizations that are reputable, The Fraser Institutions continually fudges numbers to their agendas favour. If I want a right wing group to feed me loaded information I'll go to Franco Terrazzano and the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. They're pretty scummy and bias but at least they don't pretend they're not.

This isn't an argument that you should take this to its most absurd extreme, like using the Epoch Times or Rebel News as a legit source -- those sites routinely fail fact checks and are generally unashamed of it.

If you had friends who held different political leanings than you, you would not have many friends left if you asserted every single time they framed an issue a certain way that they're wilfully misleading you instead of merely having a different viewpoint on a subject, even if you can prove that viewpoint flawed. The point is to get around the opinion and evaluate the facts.

Organizations are comprised of people who are fallible. Part of media literacy is knowing no matter what you look at, you're going to have to deal with some implicit bias or some inaccuracy and knowing how to navigate through it to get just the real information.

I hold people in the same regard when they claim CBC is some leftist liberal rag just because they don't like the words on the page.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Well, now people are going to jump on you for allegedly suggesting that the Fraser Institute is as reputable a source of information as the CBC, or whatever.

[CliffFletcher]

The Fraser Institute falls within the 'biased but usually credible' range of media sources I use. You can find useful takes in them, you just need to be aware of the spin.

Fraser Institute

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: MIXED
Credibility rating: MEDIUM

The Guardian

Bias rating: LEFT-CENTER
Factual reporting: MIXED
Credibility rating: MEDIUM

For context:

National Post

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

Globe and Mail

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

CBC

Bias rating: LEFT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

It's a mistake to put any of the above into the same category as the Epoch Times or Rebel News. There's a fundamental difference between news sources that employ a bias you dislike and conspiracy-and-lies peddling sources like those.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Hold on a minute... Where do those ratings come from?

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

The Fraser Institute falls within the 'biased but usually credible' range of media sources I use. You can find useful takes in them, you just need to be aware of the spin.

Fraser Institute

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: MIXED
Credibility rating: MEDIUM

The Guardian

Bias rating: LEFT-CENTER
Factual reporting: MIXED
Credibility rating: MEDIUM

For context:

National Post

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

Globe and Mail

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

CBC

Bias rating: LEFT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

It's a mistake to put any of the above into the same category as the Epoch Times or Rebel News. There's a fundamental difference between news sources that employ a bias you dislike and conspiracy-and-lies peddling sources like those.

I wouldn't have put the Globe and NP in the same box, unless maybe it excludes opinion pieces.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Fraser Institute is misleading but not untruthful.

Especially regarding articles on taxation, they will add in loosely calculated numbers and horrible assumptions like how everyone has to pay corporate tax (due to corporate tax being passed down to consumers), and how the negative effects on the economy of carbon tax is actually like 28% increased tax. Leading to an article headline of us paying 120% in tax and how we need a Conservative government.

It's just really marginal methodology, but it is transparent if you're willing to dig in. It takes significant time to work through their assumptions and figure out what they're trying to say, but it's not completely false.

I think this really captures why it isn't useful, particularly their info graphics and pull quotes that get shared around. The facts themselves may be true, but they way they are presented can be extremely distorted, and the only way to get to the bottom of it is to go back to their sources, and sort out what assumptions they used to get to their conclusions. And I don't find that useful, because virtually no one is willing(or should need to) do that.


So why get your information filtered through spin? Easier to discredit it mentally and not bother with the stuff no one else does, either.

[opendoor]

Yeah, the problem with the Fraser Institute is they know exactly what they're doing by being misleading and in many cases want people to come to the wrong conclusion. The line between that and outright lying isn't all that big because the end goal is the same; to mislead people.

A good example was the "96% of jobs created since the pandemic have been public sector jobs" that they were going on about a couple of years ago. They knew that by using that phrase ("since the pandemic"), people would naturally think that they were talking about the job creation numbers during the recovery phase. But instead, they were using pre-pandemic as a baseline and using imprecise language to generate the reaction that they wanted.

So what is a totally normal phenomenon in basically any country during and immediately after a recession (public sector numbers continue to grow at their normal pace while private sector numbers drop and recover over several years) was being characterized as some sort of scandal through cherry picked math. So they were effectively creating alarmism out of absolutely nothing. And in fact, reality showed the opposite. Canada's private sector job numbers recovered to their pre-pandemic level faster than in most other countries, including the US (Canada took 2 years while the US took about 2.5 years to get back to pre-pandemic private sector employment).

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

The Fraser Institute falls within the 'biased but usually credible' range of media sources I use. You can find useful takes in them, you just need to be aware of the spin.

Fraser Institute

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: MIXED
Credibility rating: MEDIUM

The Guardian

Bias rating: LEFT-CENTER
Factual reporting: MIXED
Credibility rating: MEDIUM

For context:

National Post

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

Globe and Mail

Bias rating: RIGHT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

CBC

Bias rating: LEFT-CENTER
Factual reporting: HIGH
Credibility rating: HIGH

It's a mistake to put any of the above into the same category as the Epoch Times or Rebel News. There's a fundamental difference between news sources that employ a bias you dislike and conspiracy-and-lies peddling sources like those.

A lot of people who haven't bothered to look will probably be surprised to see the likes of The Guardian receiving the same score as Fraser Institute, just on the opposite sides of the political spectrum... I know I was. Interestingly, The Guardian gets more flak than FI does for failing fact checks or using sources that have failed recently, though they put out so much content that it's probably quite low as a percentage of total volume.

Originally Posted by edslunch

I wouldn't have put the Globe and NP in the same box, unless maybe it excludes opinion pieces.

I would suspect it does, because hoooo-boy the NP's opinion pieces are something else.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by opendoor

A good example was the "96% of jobs created since the pandemic have been public sector jobs" that they were going on about a couple of years ago. They knew that by using that phrase ("since the pandemic"), people would naturally think that they were talking about the job creation numbers during the recovery phase. But instead, they were using pre-pandemic as a baseline and using imprecise language to generate the reaction that they wanted.

The pandemic existed in Feb 2020. Complaining of the "since the pandemic" is semantics, when the study clearly outlines Feb 2020 as its baseline which would be the first available stats since the pandemic. If we are to use the official March 11 2020 pandemic date declaration to qualify the "since the pandemic", would the stats be much different as actual layoffs didn't start until later in March? Can't have a recovery without accounting for the fall to measure that recovery with.


https://www.fraserinstitute.org/stud...h-covid-19-era

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/site...vid-19-era.pdf

However, we can break these data down further and in doing so have identified a marked difference in the performance of the public and private sectors. Statistics Canada defines the government sector to include government business enterprises and government-funded establishments such as public schools. Between February 2020 and July 2022, total private sector employment (including self-employment) in Canada increased by a negligible 56,100 jobs, an increase of approximately 0.4 percent. By contrast, job creation in the public sector has been robust. Over the same period, government sector employment rose by 366,800 jobs, an increase of 9.4 percent (see figures 2 and 3). These data show that the government sector was responsible for 86.7 percent of job creation between February 2020 and July 2022.

What's factually incorrect about this?

And in fact, reality showed the opposite. Canada's private sector job numbers recovered to their pre-pandemic level faster than in most other countries, including the US (Canada took 2 years while the US took about 2.5 years to get back to pre-pandemic private sector employment).

This statement doesn't refute the FI stats or statement at all, in fact appears to be deliberately misleading away from the conclusion that public sector jobs recovered and grew at a faster rate than private sector / self employment, accounting for a large majority of new jobs. That the private sector in Canada recovered faster than most other countries, is a different conclusion altogether.

This is a pretty poor example if we want to discredit FI.

Frankly, much of the criticism against Frasier Institute comes from those that want to fully dismiss it as slop because it can hurt their own narrative. FI has a slant and studies will be used to assert their viewpoint , but that doesn't make studies they do fact less or untruthful.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Firebot

FI has a slant and studies will be used to assert their viewpoint , but that doesn't make studies they do fact less or untruthful.

Except it very often has and continues to negatively impact just how truthful and factual those studies are.

If the best defence of the Fraser Institute is that they are not fact-less or entirely untruthful, that’s really no defence at all against the many criticisms (by many reputable people, despite that not fitting “the narrative”) they receive.

[opendoor]

Public sector jobs aren't market driven. They don't "recover" from a recession like private sector jobs do because there aren't the job losses there like there are in the private sector. Comparing them within that context is idiotic unless you want to create propaganda, as the Fraser Institute clearly does.

It'd be like comparing bank interest and stock market performance during a stock market crash and recovery. Like sure, 2% bank interest outperformed the S&P 500 from late 2021 to mid-2024, but so what? That's not remotely notable and it's something you see during every single market downturn if you cherry pick the date range correctly.

Similarly, the Fraser Institute waited until basically the exact moment of private sector recovery to publish their study. At that point, private sector growth would be the smallest positive number possible and comparing it to public sector growth (which doesn't fluctuate much) would create the most sensationalist numbers which was their entire intention. If you ran those same numbers now (i.e. comparing pre-crisis to post-recovery) public sector job growth represents 20% of the total growth, which is their proportion of total jobs, so exactly what you'd expect in a relatively healthy economy.

Basically, they took a statistical artifact and divorced it from its context to drive hysteria, which is exactly what propaganda does.

[GullFoss]

The most interesting thing to me is that Globe and Mail is considered center right, while I consider it Center with a Laurentian bias rather than a progressive or conservative one.

[BigThief]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

This isn't an argument that you should take this to its most absurd extreme, like using the Epoch Times or Rebel News as a legit source -- those sites routinely fail fact checks and are generally unashamed of it.

If you had friends who held different political leanings than you, you would not have many friends left if you asserted every single time they framed an issue a certain way that they're wilfully misleading you instead of merely having a different viewpoint on a subject, even if you can prove that viewpoint flawed. The point is to get around the opinion and evaluate the facts.

Organizations are comprised of people who are fallible. Part of media literacy is knowing no matter what you look at, you're going to have to deal with some implicit bias or some inaccuracy and knowing how to navigate through it to get just the real information.

I hold people in the same regard when they claim CBC is some leftist liberal rag just because they don't like the words on the page.

I've been speaking towards credibility, not political bias. In terms of media literacy that's not something I've struggled with. I think the Fraiser Institute tends to knowingly smudge numbers or misleads to fit their narrative. Posting the media bias link was just suggesting that that's true and they're not a program to be held up high in replying to Calgary geologist. I'm a left wing person that strongly believes in social programs and strong government regulation. I grew up in the oil patch and the vast majority of my close friends, especially from childhood are hardcore rural right wingers. The whole rant about friends with different political views was a little out of left field considering where I entered the conversation.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Hold on a minute... Where do those ratings come from?

The same site BigThief linked to: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

Originally Posted by edslunch

I wouldn't have put the Globe and NP in the same box, unless maybe it excludes opinion pieces.

I imagine opinion pieces are excluded from all the analysis. Because yes, they have a very different editorial slant.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

The most interesting thing to me is that Globe and Mail is considered center right, while I consider it Center with a Laurentian bias rather than a progressive or conservative one.

I expect it's because over the last 20 years the G&M has endorsed Conservative candidates more often than Liberal or NDP.

[D as in David]

Originally Posted by Ironhorse

As is importing 100s of thousands new Canadians each year. Almost a perfect storm.

Are these immigrants non-working i.e. non-tax paying? It's almost like you're trying to make it sound like our health programs are on the hook for 100s of thousands of immigrants who aren't or won't be paying taxes that support our healthcare.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by GullFoss

The most interesting thing to me is that Globe and Mail is considered center right, while I consider it Center with a Laurentian bias rather than a progressive or conservative one.

It likely has to do with the owner (Thomson) jettisoning the liberal editors... but at least they are Canadian.

I think the G&M is more center than the National Post, which is owned by American Republicans and not very trustworthy.

Either way, I would recommend more people adopt Ground.news/.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by D as in David

Are these immigrants non-working i.e. non-tax paying? It's almost like you're trying to make it sound like our health programs are on the hook for 100s of thousands of immigrants who aren't or won't be paying taxes that support our healthcare.

A large number of immigrants are coming over on student visas (400K to 500k+ offered per year) and most of those are covered under public healthcare. I doubt that a lot of those students are contributing very much to the tax pool.