TORONTO – Olivia Chow, Doug Ford and John Tory have thrown a lot of numbers at us in the course of this relentless mayoralty campaign.
Some offer clarity but most of them are weapons of mass obfuscation.
The mother lode of mind numbing numeracy landed on us on Thursday morning when the Chow campaign released its analysis of John Tory’s SmartTrack transit plan.
The review was penned by Mitchell Rothman, the former chief economist for Ontario Hydro. If you follow the logic of the news release, Chow claims Tory’s financing plan for SmartTrack falls short by about $1.7 billion.
Now I may not be good with numbers but I know that’s a big number, which is a bad thing in this case.
So, I immediately opened the excel spreadsheet attachment to better understand where the plan falls apart.
And my head immediately began to ache.
The spreadsheet was a dense cacophony of columns and rows of numbers and rules and assumptions.
You can download the excel sheet from the Olivia Chow website here.
What does it mean? Dumb it down! Dumb it down! How can I look smart if you don’t dumb it down?
Fortunately, Mr. Rothman made himself available to offer some explanation. So we dutifully attended his meeting with the media.
And here is what I gleaned.
The assumptions in his analysis are based on a Toronto Star analysis which draws on vague details from Tory’s campaign and cited unattributed numbers Tory’s people apparently pulled from a Toronto Life article about commercial and residential development in downtown Toronto. (Are you still with me?)
Rothman did note that the city could ask the province for the education share of the property tax. But since the province doesn’t have to accede to that request he assumed the money wouldn’t be forthcoming.
He did not, by the way, assume that Tory might extend TIF to new residential developments.
(Are you keeping up with all the assumptions here? Take your time and re-read if you need to.)
Then, in the face of all those assumptions, Councillor Joe Mihevc pronounced with great clarity that, based on Rothman’s analysis, “clearly the John Tory SmartTrack plan is not doable”. (What’s “clearly”?)
You should know that Mihevc is assuming this is “analysis of John Tory’s own numbers.” (Which numbers are Tory’s numbers?)
(NOTE: If at this point your head hurts – then you have read the above thoroughly and correctly.)
Once you get over the headache, you will realize that we can’t say whether Chow’s numbers make any sense because they’re based on layers of unquestioned and unsupported assumptions.
Nor can we say whether Tory’s TIF plan for SmartTrack will work because there are no hard numbers to analyse or question.
This campaign has seen all three candidates muddy their message with questionable numbers. They amount to the proverbial red herring that gets media off track. And it’s fairly effective because they know and exploit what every journalist knows.
The best of us are lousy at math and the worst among us are lazy about math.
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