Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter and his Finance Minister, Graham Steele underwent a sustained grilling today at the hands of the Halifax media. Reporters demanded to know why the pair could consider raising taxes, cutting spending and not balancing next year's budget when only a few months ago during the provincial election campaign, they promised a balanced budget with no tax hikes or major spending reductions.

"We did not have the information that we have today," a grim-faced Dexter told his inquisitors. "Six months ago, no one would have believed what we're facing today."

Dexter and Steele were reacting to the report of the Nova Scotia Economic Advisory panel released on Friday. The panel warned that trying to balance next year's budget would wreak havoc on the economy as well as on public services that people need. It also warned that tax increases and spending reductions would be needed to balance the budget in four years. Without such measures, the province would face a budget shortfall of $1.3 billion by 2013.

"We intend to balance the budget. We intend to live within our means," Dexter declared. But he added he believes the economic panel's advice is sound. "I recognize that we cannot balance the budget next year." He also conceded that tax increases would be needed even though he claimed that "tax burdens in this province are already unacceptably high."

Gloom and doom's brighter side

The NDP government's decision not to balance the budget this spring is welcome news for those who value social programs and the public sector workers who deliver them. Slashing public services in the name of balancing the books puts financial accounting ahead of people's needs. As Dexter himself pointed out to a reporter who was pressing the idea of government cuts to save money, "You can't take away services that people need."

At the same time, however, the premier made it clear that some cuts are on the way. It would be a matter of balancing cuts against needs, he suggested adding the government had to figure out, "How we take that envelope of services and fit it into the financial envelope that we have."

The sudden, serious talk of tax increases --- until now, considered a form of political and economic lunacy --- is also welcome...

Muriel Duckworth's death on Saturday, August 22nd, brought a fitting tribute from her friend, the noted scholar and peace activist, Ursula Franklin:

"I would like her to be remembered as somebody who demonstrated that it's possible to change one's society, to be profoundly critical and still remain a respected member of that society."

Muriel Duckworth was everything Franklin mentioned, strongly committed to social change, profoundly critical and highly respected. I learned about the strength of her principles and her many accomplishments while working on her Wikipedia biographical entry over the last 10 months.

Duckworth argued steadfastly that “war is stupid” — not just a senseless waste of human life, but also a major obstacle to social justice. She believed that wasting billions of dollars on weapons perpetuates poverty while reinforcing the power of privileged elites. Her profound critique grew out of her religious, intellectual and social experiences as a Quaker, a faith she shared with Ursula Franklin.

Duckworth's life-long social activism gained strength from the Social Gospel movement she learned about in 1929-30 when she studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York. The movement sought to improve people's lives by providing social services and adult education. Duckworth herself worked as a UTS field student with working-class teenaged girls in New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen.” Later she said she learned more from the young women than they did from her.

It was also at UTS that Duckworth first heard about the American labour leader Eugene V. Debs. Debs ran for the U.S. presidency while he was in jail for speaking out against American participation in the First World War. A quotation of his hung on her wall six decades after she left UTS. It reveals a lot about how Muriel Duckworth herself thought and felt about social justice:

While there is a lower class, I am in it
While there is a criminal element, I am of it
And while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

According to a well-known Halifax polling company, Nova Scotians are "highly likely" to elect an NDP government on June 9th. The prediction is based on an opinion survey released today by Corporate Research Associates. CRA reports that its poll of 627 Nova Scotia voters shows that 37 per cent of the decided and leaning ones supported the NDP when the survey was conducted from May 7 to 16. The Nova Scotia Liberals came second with 31 per cent support, while the governing Conservatives trailed with 28 per cent. The Green Party scored only three per cent.

Looks like the NDP enjoys a comfortable lead, doesn't it?

But a closer look at the numbers shows that great caution is needed when interpreting them. True, the results of the latest poll are consistent with four other CRA polls conducted over the last year. The trend in voter support seems to consistently favour the NDP as the party came first in every one of those surveys. However, some simple math calculations show that the outcome of the provincial election is a lot less certain than this poll seems to show.

Taking the poll at face value

OK. Pollsters like to give precise numbers to show the support each party enjoys, but poll results actually fall within a range. This is what's called the poll's "margin of error." CRA reports the overall margin of error for this survey was plus or minus 3.9 percentage points, 95 times out of 100. The numbers and terminology seem complicated, but their actual meaning is quite simple. If the same question had been asked of a similarly sized sample of voters during the same time period, any reputable polling company would have found results within that 3.9 percentage point margin of error, 95 times out of 100. Or, to put it another way, if the election had actually been held during the polling period, each party's vote tally would have fallen somewhere within that range: plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

Thus, the CRA poll shows that support for the NDP could have been as high as 40.9 per cent [37+3.9] or as low as 33.1 per cent [37-3.9]. The Liberals could have been as high as 34.9 per cent [31+3.9] or as low as 27.1 per cent [31-3.9]. Obviously, the ranges (shown below) overlap creating uncertainty about which of the main parties was actually in first place:

NDP: 40.9--37--33.1
Libs: 34.9--31--27.1
PCs: 31.9--28--24.1...

As the deadline approaches for filing income tax returns, the mainstream media revive the old myth that when it comes to taxes, the rich pay through the nose. One version of the myth dates back to April 23, 2005 when the Globe and Mail carried a piece with this snappy lead:

"They used to say make the rich pay. Well, they do. The top 10 per cent of Canadian wage earners carried more than half the nation's federal personal income tax load in 2002 -- 52.6 per cent -- up significantly from 1990."

The Globe's reporting was based on a set of misleading income tax figures supplied the day before by Statistics Canada. The flawed statistics have been repeated ever since. CBC Radio's economics reporter, Mike Hornbrook cited them this week as did the Vancouver Sun's Harvey Enchin in his April 9th column entitled, "Taxing the rich just doesn't work."

As an article in the July-August 2005 edition of This Magazine pointed out, Statistics Canada based its figures on tax-filers, (that is, anyone who submitted a personal income tax form), not taxpayers (people who filed their tax form and had taxes to pay). Millions of people who are too poor to pay income taxes, file returns to claim refundable credits such as the child tax benefit and the GST credit. Since the number of tax-filers greatly exceeds the number of taxpayers, the top 10 per cent in the StatsCan study earned $64,500 and up in 2002. And while incomes between $64,500 and say, $85,000 are comfortable ones, people earning them aren't really among the ranks of the rich. Including them in the top 10 per cent obviously inflates the apparent share of taxes paid by the richest among us.

In an October 2005 study published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, tax expert Neil Brooks pointed to other flaws in the StatsCan report. He argued that the percentage of tax paid by the top 10 per cent had increased over the 12 year period of the StatsCan study because the incomes of the richest had risen substantially while the incomes of the poorest had fallen. "In fact, the...