Representation in Canada for 2008 General Election

This is a follow-up to Friday nights post, I thought this visual would more clearly demonstrate the voter representation.

• The label is the percentage voter turnout in each province/territory
• The size of the circle is representative of population
• The colour indicates how well the voters in that province were represented by having the candidate of their choice elected. Green is better (>50%) and red is poorer (<50%) representation. The darker the colour the more extreme, so a dark green would be the preferred good representation.

Somewhere on my to do list is to collect this information for several general elections and view it over time.

Do we have representative democracy in Canada?

In a true representative democracy, all Canadians should have equal access to power with every vote carrying equal weight. Unfortunately we appear very far from that situation. My analysis below is based on the 2008 General Election as that is the most recent full data set. I did not use the recent by-elections as the turnout for them was considerably lower than the general election. Most of the data is presented in pairs purple/blue, where the purple is generally getter a better deal than the blue.

• Richard Nadeau (Quebec-Bloc Québécois) won the riding of Gatineau with only 29.2% of the votes (15189 out of 52098).
• Kevin Sorenson (Alberta-Conservative) won the riding of Crowfoot with 82.0% of the votes (39342 out of 47958).

• Leona Aglukkaq (Nunavut-Conservative) won the riding of Nunavut with the least votes; only 2815 votes, which represents 34.9% of the popular vote in the riding.
• Jason Kenney (Alberta-Conservative) won the riding of Calgary Southeast with the most votes; 41425 votes, which represents 73.9% of the popular vote in the riding.

• The riding with the largest population is Brampton West in the province of Ontario with 170422 people.
• The riding with the smallest population is Labrador in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador with only 26364 people. 
• That is a ratio of  6.5:1.

• The riding with the largest number of registered electors is Oak Ridges--Markham in the province of Ontario with 136755 electors.
• The riding with the smallest number of registered electors is Nunavut in the territory of Nunavut with only 17089 electors. 
• That is a ratio of  8.0:1.

• The riding with the smallest percentage of registered electors is York West in the province of Ontario with 57.4% electors.
• The riding with the largest percentage of registered electors is Québec in the province of Quebec with 85.4% electors.

• The riding of Labrador in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador had the fewest valid ballots cast, with 7721 ballots. It was won by Todd Russell of the Liberal Party, who received 5426 votes, or 70.3% of the popular vote in the riding.
• The riding of Oak Ridges--Markham in the province of Ontario had the most valid ballots cast, with 75821 ballots. It was won by Paul Calandra of the Conservative Party, who received 32028 votes, or 42.2% of the popular vote in the riding.

• The riding of Fort McMurray--Athabasca in the province of Alberta had the smallest turnout, with only 35.8% of the electorate voting. It was won by Brian Jean of the Conservative Party, who received 17160 votes, or 67.1% of the popular vote in the riding.
• The riding of Verchères--Les Patriotes in the province of Quebec had the largest turnout, with 71.9% of the electorate voting. It was won by Luc Malo of the Bloc Québécois Party, who received 27602 votes, or 50.8% of the popular vote in the riding.

• 48.7% of the electors had their candidate elected to office, which means that 51.3% of the electors are not being represented in Parliament. That extrapolates to 78.5% of the population is not represented in our Parliament.

Looking at the provinces, I have graphed the results below. I have organized the provinces from West to East so I could overlay them (roughly) on the map. It is interesting to see some of the trends. The Territories are on the far right, also in a West to East order. Some things I noticed are:

• As you travel from West to east the percentage of electors (electors/population) generally increases. The low ones here are British Columbia and Ontario.
• A similar trend is also seen with the voter turnout, as you travel east the turnout increases. There are two significant exceptions to this trend: British Columbia and Newfoundland/Labrador.
• The final trend shows the opposite. This is the percentage of population within the province that is represented by the candidate they choose on the ballot. It starts high in Alberta and declines throughout Central Canada with a very slight increase in the Maritime provinces. Again there are two significant exceptions to this trend: British Columbia and Newfoundland/Labrador.

Public debt of Selected Countries

Following the bailout of Greece and Ireland there has been talk about trouble in other European countries. I have taken a look at the public debt trends in these countries over the past 50 years and contrasted it to Canada and the United States. Public debt may be only one factor, but it a very important one. Here is what I found.

All those countries have experienced sharp increases in public debt over the past couple of years, but so has Canada and the United States of America. It is clear that Greece was already having significant problems similar to what Canada experienced in the early 1990's, but they have been unable to to anything about it. Ireland on the other hand made great progress over the past 15 or so years.

Public Financing of Canadian Federal Political Parties

The debate on the per-vote subsidy for federal political parties has been simmering since Finance Minister Jim Flaherty proposed eliminating it in his fiscal update of November 2008. It was that update that almost sent Canadians back to the polls, mere weeks after electing a minority Conservative government, because it lacked a stimulus package to spur the slumping Canadian economy.

Flaherty proposed elimination of the per-vote subsidy to ensure there is "no free ride for political parties”. He went on to say "This is the last stop on the route; there will be no free ride for anyone else in government, either," and "Canadians pay their own bills, and for some Canadians, that is getting harder to do. Political parties should pay their own bills, too, and not with excessive tax dollars.". What Flaherty overlooked are all the other direct and indirect taxpayer subsidies that political parties benefit from.

A lot has transpired in the intervening months, but the per-vote subsidy issue has remained on the back burner; occasionally being raised as is was by Tom Flanagan and David Coletto of the University of Calgary in January, and Jeffrey Simpson in the Globe and Mail on August 11^th. The day following Simpson's article, Alice Funke (who runs PunditsGuide.ca ) pointed out political parties rely on four sources of revenue: the per-vote subsidy, party fundraising, as well as riding association and candidate fundraising. There are also two additional sources of revenue: leadership contests, and Elections Canada's 50% reimbursement on election expenses. Registered political parties that obtain at least 2 percent of the total valid votes cast in a general election, or 5 percent of the valid votes cast in the ridings where they have endorsed candidates, are entitled to a reimbursement of 50 percent of their actual election expenses paid. In keeping with Flaherty's assertion that political parties should pay their own bills, not with excessive tax dollars, it is worth considering all tax dollars the parties benefit from.

The per-vote subsidy, has already been well reported. The reimbursement of election expenses is published by the Receiver General in the Public Accounts of Canada in the year following an election or bi-election. The final figure is the indirect taxpayer rebate that individual taxpayers receive when making any federal political contributions. This can be found on line 410 of the federal worksheet. This indirect rebate ends up in many cases being the most significant taxpayer funding of political parties. Being indirect, and hidden, it is easy to ignore. The Canada Revenue Agency keeps this data confidential so there is no way to calculate the exact value without their cooperation. Reasonable estimates however can be made, as I have below.


All parties emphasize this tax rebate when soliciting donations with statements like “your contribution in any one year may entitle you to generous political tax credits on your next tax return”. They talk about getting 75% back on your contribution up to $400. Supporters of this rebate often counter that donations above the $400 do not benefit from the full 75% and use this argument to dismiss the significance of the rebate. With the majority of political contributions below $400, that is not a solid argument. It is worth exploring what the effective rebate would be on higher value contributions. The following graph illustrates the effective rebate in dollars and percentage on donations up to the $1,100 maximum.

As illustrated, even at the maximum $1,100 donation level the effective rebate will be just under 54%. Lacking detailed accounting from the Canada Revenue Agency we need to make some estimates on what rebates would apply. Funke has started some related investigation, she looked at the 2009 contributions from individuals based on detailed reports from Elections Canada and groups them into amount per individual contributor. Contributions vary by party, and from year to year. For the purposes of this analysis I have selected broad categories to reflect an approximate average between the parties. 55% of the contributed funds are assumed to have the full 75% rebate, with the next 15% at the $600 rebate, and so on according to the following table. With fewer donations, and those being higher in value, the Liberal party is probably benefiting slightly less from taxpayer dollars than this average and the converse for the Conservative Party.

Contributions	Value	Effective rebate
55%	<= $400	75.00%
15%	<= $600	66.67%
5%	<= $800	61.46%
5%	<= $1,000	55.83%
20%	<= $1,100	53.79%

I have calculated the average annual contribution to each federal party based on the returns from Elections Canada for the past 5 years. It is now possible to estimate the average annual tax rebate on contributions that benefits each federal party with a range of minimum (53.79%) to maximum (75%) covered by the hashed area, and my estimated value is represented by the vertical line and value.

To complete the model, tax rebates attributed to candidates, riding associations. and leadership campaigns need to be taken into account. Far less information is available on these to make reasonable estimates. I have included a very rough estimate of the public component for candidates and riding associations at the end of the next two charts, assuming a low rebate of 40%. We now sum up all these taxpayer contributions to the political parties and get a more complete picture of federal party financing from the public accounts. The following chart illustrates for each party how much funding they are receiving on average annually from the taxpayer (based on the past 5 years). The non per-vote subsidy ranges from a low of 44% of total public financing for the Bloc Québécois to a high of 69% for the Conservative Party of Canada.

One final view of the public funding is from a popular vote perspective. The original intent of the per-vote subsidy was to ensure an even playing field for public funding of political parties. The more votes the party received, the more funding it would be entitled to. In an ideal world the average annual per-vote funding should be even across all parties, but this is clearly not the case. Here is the total estimated annual public funding divided by the number of votes received in the fall 2008 General Election.

Looking at the average election cycle of 3.58 years (40^th Parliament, 143 years) we can get an estimation of how many public dollars each party consumes for each vote received. Some parties are over twice as efficient in their use of public funds as others for their electoral campaigns.

If Jim Flaherty is truly interested in “no free ride for political parties”, then he needs to consider the entire public funding spectrum. Today our federal parties together have an aggregate annual revenue of about $95 million. My calculations demonstrate that 80%, or over $70 million, is from the taxpayer. The per-vote subsidy only accounts for slightly over one third (36%) of that public funding. It is a fallacy that any of the parties are self sustaining and pay their own bills.

In a democracy it is important to have strong candidates and healthy parties, and public funding helps achieve that goal. The per-vote subsidy is a fair system that levels the public funding between all parties and strengthens our democracy. Expense reimbursement and individual contributor rebates distort it.

It is time to bring accountability and fairness to public funding of federal politics:

1. Request that the Canada Revenue Agency start reporting on total tax rebates (Schedule 1 line 410) relating to each federal party, candidate, riding association, and leadership contestant. We need full transparency to understand where our tax dollars are going.
2. Eliminate reimbursements and individual political contribution tax rebates (step 1 will then become obsolete).
3. Maintain the same overall level of public funding of political parties as today by increasing the per-vote subsidy to cover the current average of funding across all parties.
4. Explore public funding alternatives for candidates, riding associations, and leadership contestants.

Copyright © ?Impact - Questionable Impact, 2010

Was that really a missile?

On Monday November 8, 2010 the KCBS news helicopter captured some spectacular footage of what they thought was a missile launch. This story quickly went viral.





It really appears to be something spectacular when you look closely at the footage. The apparent vertical launch profile of the missile, the plume of smoke, and the light flashing from the solid fuel rockets as some people claim.

The Pentagon and NORAD denied any knowledge of a missile. That simply added more fuel to the fire and gave license to the conspiracy theorists. The story went viral. There were many of us who accepted the official story that it was probably an airplane contrail, and knew that all we needed was the exact location of the helicopter taking the footage, direction the camera was facing, and time it was shot. Thanks to the work of blog writer Liem Bahneman we now have a very credible explanation. There are two possible commercial flights that were in the area at the approximate right time, they are US Air flight 808. and UPS flight 902. The most likely candidate is the US Air flight, as shown in the map below.

A more detailed map shows the coastline of California, and where it passes over Santa Catalina Island.

I extracted the flight details for both of these and put them into Google Maps. The airplane icons represent US Air flight 808 which is the most likely candidate, and the smaller triangles are UPS flight 902. If you click on any icon you will get details about the time it was at that location and altitude, speed, heading, and if it was in level flight, climbing or descending and at what rate.


View US Air Flight 808 in a larger map


It's up to you to believe in secret missile testing, or show of strength from North Korea or whatever theory grabs your fancy. I believe there is sufficient evidence to explain this is simply a contrail from US Air flight 808. I have provide all the links to the details you need. The rest is up to you.

Political Attack Ads

It appears that modern politicians have nothing on those of a by-gone era.

Canada Deep in Debt for over 50 years

  Background



Recently the Department of Finance Canada published the latest fiscal tables that detail our federal governments' financial history over the past 49 years. After some searching around, I found an older copy that includes another 15 years earlier. I took the 1960-61 year from the earlier table and combined it with the latest 49 years to provide the 50 year snapshot of Canada's financial health. Besides being a nice round number (half-century), I was born within 6 hours of the start of Canada's 1960-61 fiscal year and I can identify very closely with this time frame.



This 50 year snapshot begins halfway through the term of John Diefenbaker and concludes in the middle of Stephen Harper's term. I generally stick to the 50 year term for comparisons, but will make some additional observations outside that term. In general, John Diefenbaker carried larger budget deficits in his earlier years in office ($557 million higher annually), and we are only through 7 months of 2010-11 for Stephen Harper but the "on-track" statements suggest that the 2010 budget which forecast a $49 billion deficit this year will happen (i.e. the trend is going in the wrong direction).

The Bottom Line

I will start with the bottom line, because this is really what matters to Canadians. We have been carrying a large debt load since at least World War II. If we did not have this starting debt load, today we would have been able to afford an average of 19% higher program spending with zero debt today. The big problem with the finances of our country is debt management.

The Raw Data

Let's first look at the annual operating surplus (deficit) and the national debt. Note: click on any of the charts to enlarge them.

In the above chart I use the operating surplus (deficit), not budget surplus. The budget surplus (deficit) however is reflected in the (mounting) debt. The operating surplus illustrates how well the government balanced the program costs with revenue in a specific year. The government is still responsible for past debt, making the budget surplus (deficit) most important. The green lines at the bottom of the chart represent changes in Prime Minister, and the coloured background represent either Progressive Conservative/Conservative (blue), or Liberal (red) governments. It is clear that the years 1975-1995 were very bad for our debt, and the year 2009 and looking forward is also very bad.



I delineate with the start and end date of each Prime Minister's government. It could be argued that policies of one Prime Minister will affect the early part of the next one(s). This is especially true for those who served very short terms (Turner ~3 months, Campbell ~4 months, and Clark ~9 months); unfortunately there is no clean way around this. By being consistent I hope to at least provide a balanced view. Just as poor [financial] decisions during the latter part of Trudeau's time in office affected Turner & Mulroney, the poor decisions during latter part of Mulroney's time in office affected Campbell & Chrétien, and the good decisions during Chrétien & Martin's time in office affected Harper. If you look at the details on the charts you will clearly see the trends that start in one term and continue into the next.

The Basic Scorecard

In a few calculations, I provide the absolute numbers for a term (e.g. total debt accumulated by each Prime Minister). In most case however I will provide annualized results. This allows comparisons between Prime Ministers even though their relative terms may vary in length. Let's first look at what I call the budget scorecard. This has both the operating surplus (deficit) and budget surplus (deficit), in annualized form. The operating surplus shows us that Trudeau, Clark, and Turner were not able to cover program costs from revenues (taxes) on average over their term in office, although they may have had some years with an operating surplus. Harper was able to manage an average operating surplus over the first four years of his term, unfortunately the trend is downward and last year was twice the worst operating deficit in history. 2010-11 looks like it will be similar. If this keeps up, Harper will be looking at an overall operating deficit. The budget surplus is most important as it includes the debt servicing charges. Regardless how a Prime Minister deals with current expenses, prior debt servicing is part of his/her responsibility. The situation here is much different, and we can see that over the past 50 years it was only during Martin's term that a Prime Minister has managed an annualized budget surplus.

How much did they borrow?

Not all our Prime Minister's borrowed money to cover their program operating costs, but many did. Those that did are in the following table, sorted from worst to best on an annualized basis. I did not include the three who didn't borrow any money to cover their operating costs: Campbell, Chrétien, and Martin.

Prime Minister	Total new money borrowed for programs	Annualized new money borrowed for programs
Turner	$2,658 million	$12,288 million
Harper	$26,184 million	$6,317 million
Clark	$2,591 million	$3,466 million
Trudeau	$48,223 million	$3,122 million
Mulroney	$13,450 million	$1,534 million
Diefenbaker	$174 million	$57 million
Pearson	$193 million	$39 million

Scaling to reflect inflation

It is argued that in our inflationary economy, a better comparison is debt/GDP levels. With a larger economy, it is suggested that it becomes easier (I'm still waiting) to pay down previous debt. The analogy is like buying a house, and then switching to an accelerated payment plan after getting a raise. Let's first compare the national debt with Canada's GDP.




I find the accelerated GDP growth rate in the new millennium a bit disconcerting, but that is a topic for a different discussion. To simplify viewing, I have combined both into a single metric (debt:GDP ratio). The following chart shows that ratio in the blue line (left axis), and the growth of the debt:GDP ratio is reflected in the bars (right axis). A red bar is bad, as we are growing the debt relative to GDP. A green bar is good, as we are shrinking the debt relative to GDP.

It is clear from the above that things were going well during the Pearson years, and the first half of Trudeau's first term. Things then turned bad throughout the rest of Trudeau's time, including Clark's and the first year or so of Mulroney. Mulroney then made some changes that reversed that trend for a couple of years, but unfortunately that was short lived and the latter part of his term, Campbell's and the first year of Chrétien saw us slide back down. The situation was fixed by Chrétien and we saw improvement through his term, Martin's, and into the start of Harper's. The past couple of years however we have again slid back into increasing debt relative to GDP. I did not get GDP data back far enough to evaluate Diefenbaker in this respect, part of a future project. It does not look promising however, as he had even larger deficits earlier in his term.

The Redrawn Scorecard to accommodate inflation

It is now possible to return to the earlier scorecard, but scale it relative to GDP. This is probably the best overall comparison of the ability of the different Prime Minister's governments to manage our debt.

We can dismiss the 3 & 4 month terms of Turner and Campbell as they had little time to make effective changes. This leaves us with a poor record in debt management for Trudeau's second term, and Mulroney a close second. Note that if both of Trudeau's terms are combined (right of chart), then Mulroney is about twice as bad as Trudeau's overall debt management performance. The best overall is Martin, followed by Chrétien and then Pearson. Everyone else is bad, it is just a matter of degree.

Budget surplus as a percentage of revenue

Looking at debt:GDP ratio we are depending on inflationary forces to make our problem less severe, but in the long run we need to reduce the debt. The only way to reduce debt is to have a budget surplus. We pay down the debt from our revenues, so we should look at the budget surplus as a percentage of revenue. We need to run many years in the green (above zero) in order to pay debt down.

The Big Picture

Over the past 50 years we have spent $4.16 trillion on programs, and have collected a total of $4.74 trillion (taxes and other revenue). In that same time-frame our national debt has increased by $506 billion. We have gifted $1.1 trillion to the bankers during my lifetime, or $32,563 for every man, woman, and child alive on March 31, 2010. Better debt management would have allowed us to have both zero debt today, and spend 19% more on average for programs.

Why did this happen?

There never seems to be enough money to go around, but it is abundantly clear the main reason is our poor management of the debt. Regardless if your view is that governments should have lower taxes and less services, or higher taxes and more services, either situation could be accommodated if we had the flexibility of a lower debt. First and foremost our governments need to deliver balanced budgets. Second we need to clear this debt off our books rapidly. The only way to accomplish that is to direct sufficient funds toward that goal. Chrétien, Martin, and Pearson get full marks here and the rest of the our Prime Minister's governments are failures. We can neither raise program expenses without a corresponding rise in taxation, or cut taxation without a corresponding drop in programs. The actions of Prime Minister Stephen Harper took in making drastic cuts to corporate and consumption taxes turned us again on the road to financial ruin, just as clearly as new programs initiated by previous governments did.

Until we get our heads above water, we will continue to drown in debt. It is imperative we maintain adequate taxation to not just cover program expenses but with enough headroom to accommodate debt repayment as well. There is no magic formula for appropriate level of taxation and money to allocate to programs, it all depends on what priorities we want as a country. With a 50 year history however we do have a good template from which to make comparisons. The following chart has program expenses and revenue scaled to GDP.

In an ideal world with balanced budgets, both lines would be equal and maintained at a constant level to maintain a standard level of service. We can see that program expenses have been dropping steadily since the early 1980's, with the exception of last year's stimulus spending. Until the debt is repaid we also need to maintain the revenue sufficiently above program expenses to cover interest and principal repayment. Based on historical averages it look like having revenue around 23% of GDP, and program expenses around 17% of GDP (about 5% of GDP delta) will allow us to repay the debt. It will still take many years to complete that repayment, but once we do we can then afford whatever combination of lower taxation and/or increased programs we want.

What if we didn't start with any debt?

I thought it would be interesting to look at the scenario if there was no debt owing when I was born. Is this a problem caused by my generation, or one we inherited from a previous generation. It is clear to me that my generation has not done enough to solve the problem, but did we start it? With the data available, it was easy to generate a simulation based on a starting debt in 1960 of zero dollars (actually I can simulate any starting value), and maintain the same program expenses and taxation for the past 50 years. As I expected, the debt was repaid. So the other question in my mind is if we ran a surplus and invested that surplus what would we end up with. I have charted below 5 scenarios. The status quo is charted in brown and shows our current debt, the other four lines represent 0% interest on any surplus invested, a fixed rate of 1.5% interest, a variable interest rate equal to 33% of what we paid to the banks on their interest charges, and finally the unlikely full bank-rate interest. It would be easy to plot other scenarios with different rates, or perhaps a point spread.

What is clear however is that our current debt is inherited from previous generations. All simulated scenarios show a surplus today, even if we didn't earn any money on investing our surplus funds. They all run a debt during the 1980's and 1990's but we managed to get ahead by 1999. I also ran this model with different starting debts, and found that anything below $8.5 billion debt in 1960 would allow us to be debt free today.

Making it Personal

When I was born, I owed the banks $722 on behalf of the federal government. By my 50^th birthday, that had increased to $15,385. Over my lifetime, I gave $162,799 to the federal government of which $18,472 went straight to the banks. I know, you are thinking you paid more taxes than that. Well just remember, I am your average Canadian that includes man, woman, and child.

Comparison by Party

During the past 50 years we have had either Progressive Conservative, Conservative, or Liberal party run governments. In all the charts I have shown this with the coloured background. I will now provide a table to sum up the differences between these governments. I have grouped Progressive Conservative and Conservative together for this comparison.

Party	Progressive Conservative / Conservative	Liberal
Time in office	17 years (33%)	33 years (66%)
New money borrowed	$40 billion	$54 billion
Average new money borrowed annually	$2.3 billion	$1.6 billion
Total operating surplus	$128.30 billion (22%)	$452.30 billion (78%)
Average annual operating surplus	$7.5 billion	$13.7 billion
Total budget deficit	$345.0 billion (67%)	$173.1 billion(33%)
Average annual budget deficit	$20.2 billion	$5.3 billion

It appears that Progressive Conservative or Conservative parties run budget deficits that are four times higher than Liberals, and operating surpluses that are half that of the Liberals.

Without our original debt load that dates back to World War II, we would be debt free today and have 19% room to either focus on more programs or lower taxes. We need to focus on clearing up this debt so future generations will not inherit our parents problems.

Crime Rate & Total Crime 1962-2009

This is just a quick update on crime in Canada. Some people are under the impression that although crime rate is decreasing, overall crime is increasing due to population growth. Like Crime Rate, this has not been the case since the peak year 1991. I will try to provide a more refined view when I get a chance but here is a preliminary graph to illustrate the trend. To find the data source I am working from, check out my other articles with the label 'crime'.

Ontario 10 Year Financial Record

It is interesting to look at the 10 Year track record of the Ontario Provincial finances. I have charted the revenue vs. the program expenses, and compared it to the GDP. All currency figures are in $billion. The Surplus includes debt management charges. Program expenses have been averaging 5.93% annual growth rate, and between 2004 and 2008 the revenue exceeded that. In 2008 the GDP dropped significantly along with revenues, this created a significant deficit which also became an operating deficit in 2009. There was a increase in program expense rate growth in 2009-10 probably due in large part to the government bailout of the auto sector, that rate slowed but is still above the average trend.

Power Prices in Ontario

Note: As someone correctly pointed out to me the Provincial Benefit should also be considered. This is a 'correction' rate that is added to (or subtracted from) the market rate (HEOB) that I have charted below. The market rate it still very important when power generation is considered, but the retail rate is balanced by other forces. When I get the opportunity I will update the graph to show both and repost. I was aware of this when I wrote the HEOP becomes the basis of the commodity charge, but I failed to really identify Provincial Benefit. Note that home consumers generally see fixed rates or time of day rates, but that is a whole different story beyond the scope of this article.

Are power rates in the province going up because of increased generating costs? I looked at the Hourly Ontario Energy Price based on the weighted monthly average and was surprised by what I found. I was expecting to at least see some increase due to inflation, and possibly some due to changing generation methods. The chart below shows every month since they began recording in May'02 until the last full month with data - September'10. The trend is actually declining, but it appears there are long periods of time where the price remains just below the mean value of $50.88/MWh.

HOEP is the hourly price that is charged to Local Distributing Companies and other non-dispatchable loads. HOEP is also paid to self-scheduling generators. HOEP becomes the basis of the commodity charges in the Retail electricity market if customers receive their electricity from their Local Distributing Company. Customers who have arranged contracts with licensed Retailers are not affected by HOEP, but instead are charged their particular contract rate for the commodity.

HOEP is important when looking at the effect of power generation as it is most reflective of the wholesale market in the province. The HOEP is calculated in $/MWh, convert to $/KWh (which is what you generally see at the retail side) you need to divide by 1000. For example the latest month available (September 2010) is $32.91/MWh or 3.3¢/KWh. The data is from the Independent Electricity System Operator, the not-for-profit corporate entity appointed by the Government of Ontario with the authority for establishing, monitoring and enforcing reliability standards in the province.

Ontario GDP & Provincial Government Budget

The Ontario GDP has doubled in the past 18 years from about $300 billion in 1993 to around $600 billion today. The following chart illustrates the GDP growth, and the budget surplus/deficit each year. A surplus is shown in green, and a deficit in red. Note the scale (on right) is different for the budget; the GDP scale is on the left.

GDP figures are drawn at quarterly resolution, but the budget is computed annually. The bars for the budget are show at the first quarter for each fiscal year. I have added the name of the Premier for each government, and the black vertical lines correspond to the date of change of government.

Mike Harris ran an average annual deficit of $2.675 billion.

Ernie Eves ran an average annual deficit of $2.683 billion.

Prior to the recession, Dalton McGuinty managed an average annual surplus of $403 million. After teaming up with Stephen Harper on the General Motors bailout, the situation has changed dramatically and it is now an average annual deficit of $4.355 billion.

 

Information sources:

Ontario Budget 2010

Ontario Budget 2003

Ontario Budget 1996

Ontario Economic Accounts Historical Data

Canada's growing trade deficit with China

China is a very important trading partner with Canada, but we face an increasing trade deficit. Our imports from China are over 3 ½ times those of our exports, giving us a trade deficit of around $30 billion annually. This information is from the Canadian International Merchandise Trade Database at Statistics Canada. Note that the year 2010 is an estimate based on extrapolated data from January-August.

Collapsed house at 477 Scarborough

Here are the before google & bing pictures of the collapsed house at 477 Scarborough in Toronto. It looks like an original older construction in these photos, so it may have been under construction to increase the size. It is the house with the green roof in the middle of the pictures.

 

Budget 2009-10 Projection History

There is a long history associated with projecting the federal 2009-10 fiscal budget. Originally Jim Flaherty projected that we would have a $1.3 billion surplus which we could apply to debt repayment. That quickly changed to a $33.7 billion deficit and bounced up and down, ending today with a $55.6 billion deficit.

In late May, two months after the 2009-10 fiscal year ended, Jim Flaherty told Canadians that we were going to come in at a $47.0 billion deficit. Today he announced the figure would be $55.6 billion, but instead of comparing to his last estimate he compares to an earlier estimate from Budget 2010. When you make so many projections that are all over the map, you can't just pick one that is closest and suggest that your projections were close. The final(?) figure is $8.6 billion higher than he was projecting two months after the fiscal year ended, that is over 15% higher. Note that the budget deficit came in 65% higher than Jim Flaherty was projecting at the start of fiscal year 2009-10.

Date of projection	Source	Amount
February 26, 2008	Budget 2008	$1.3 billion surplus
January 27, 2009	Budget 2009	$33.7 billion deficit
June 11, 2009	Canada's Economic Action Plan - 2nd Report - June 2009	$50.2 billion deficit
September 10, 2009	Update of Economic and Fiscal Projections - September 2009	$55.9 billion deficit
March 4, 2010	Budget 2010	$53.8 billion deficit
May 28, 2010	Fiscal Monitor - March 2010	$47.0 billion deficit
October 12, 2010	Update of Economic and Fiscal Projections - October 2010	$55.6 billion deficit

York Region peaker power plant

One year ago there was nothing in the area where the York Region peaker power plant is being built:

That has now all changed.


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Provincial Crime Statistics for 2009

How does the crime rate in your province compare with others and with the national average. Here are the latest (2009) crime rates by province. Those in green are less than the national average, while those in yellow are above the national average. The red entry is the highest. I dealt with overall crime rate trends in an earlier article on September 18th, and drilled down by city on October 1st.

It is clear that the lowest crime rate is in Ontario, and highest is in Saskatchewan. Quebec & New Brunswick are fairly low, the Atlantic provinces are about average and the western provinces are higher than average. I have not included the territories here, in general they have even higher crime rates than the provinces.

Click on the table to see it in original size.

Stephen Harper on Program Spending

On March 24th, 2004 at 3:25 p.m., Stephen Harper Leader of the Opposition (Canadian Alliance) rose in the House of Commons and stated:

Only a few short years ago the Government of Canada had projected program spending of just a little over $100 billion. Today this budget projects program spending well over $150 billion. It is an increase of 50% in only a few short years.

Mr. Harper, let's look at your record so far. At the end of this year you are projecting a program spending of $238 billion, or over 42% increase after five years. You are way above the Liberal growth. They went from program spending of $120 billion which they took over from Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative Government to $176 billion in their last year, or an average of 4.3% growth per year. Your government has grown program spending at a rate of 8.4% per year. If we look at your projected spending for 2014-15 which is after the "stimulus" spending has ceased, you will still have grown 47% or 5.2% per year.

As you yourself said in your statement

It is a Liberal Conservative regime that cannot be trusted to manage our public funds.

Note the data sources are the same as my earlier post on Jim Flaherty's Expenses. The difference between Program Spending and total Expenses is the public debt charges. They were around $30 billion annually, but will increase over 30% (to $40 billion) with all the new debt we have been acquiring recently. The one additional source is from the 1995 budget which states in the Expenditure Outlook section of the Fiscal Outlook fact sheet that program expenses were $120 billion in 1993-94.

Jim Flaherty's Federal Expenses

As Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty has increased our federal government expenses by 28% after 4 short years in office, from $209 billion his first year to $267.7 billion last year). With more increases on the way, this self described 'fiscal conservative' does not appear to meet that criteria. The source of this data is from Jim Flaherty's budgets (May 2, 2006; March 19, 2007; February 26, 2008; January 27, 2009; March 4, 2010)

Crime Severity Index in Canada by City

Statistics Canada recently released the Crime Severity Index for the larger 208 police servicing communities representing 77.8% of the population of Canada. Here is that list in a table that can be sorted by the various fields. Simply click on the column heading you want to sort by. The CSI columns are their ranking in the list, if you want the actual CSI value refer to the original Statistics Canada article above.

I also have the data in a Google Spreadsheet format if you want to investigate further.

Crime Rate in Canada - 1962-2009

On Thursday I wrote about Canada's decreasing crime rate, although I only had data going back to 1999 to demonstrate this trend. I have since located a 1998 copy of the Juristat Crime Statistics in Canada that has additional data going back to 1962 on page 15. I have graphed them below.

You will notice a break in the detailed crime data between the years 1998 & 1999. As I am retrieving this data from two different sources, it is clear that several items that used to be classified as 'other crime' have been reclassified into 'violent' or 'property' crime. I could make some guesses based on what is not specifically mentioned in the old report (see page 16) compared to Table 2 in the new data; the only one I can confirm, because it is listed in both reports, is that 'arson' has been reclassified as a property crime. I have left the total crime as a contiguous curve as that would be the same in both reports.

It is clear from this data that the crime rate in Canada peaked around 1991, and has been declining since. I am still unable to locate Stockwell Day's August 3^rd unreported crime statistics to report on.