Ontario election: How truthy is Hudak’s new ‘Truth’ ad?

Watch above: Tim Hudak’s new ‘Truth’ ad

TORONTO – Tim Hudak continued his push for premier Wednesday releasing a dramatic new ad, simply entitled ‘Truth.’

The ad starts with a close up of Hudak and climax-of-a-football-movie music in the background. He says he could tell you what you want to hear – but he won’t, because he’s going “to be honest with you.”

But is he being honest? A quick look at the facts shows his truth ad isn’t entirely truthy.

“A million people in our province woke up this morning without a job.”

As of April, there were 555,600 Ontarians out of work, according to Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey.

Even if you include people who’ve given up looking – nearly impossible to do, as a drop in participation rate could mean any number of things, including education – and people who are underemployed, which in fairness we shouldn’t because they woke up with a job (or three) but not enough to pay the rent, that doesn’t square with Hudak’s million-person figure.

Truthiness level: Low.

“We’re spending $1.5 million every hour that we just don’t have.”

The number was sourced from an article by the Canadian Taxpayer Federation that suggested Ontario`s debt increases by $1.43 million every hour – $7 million off Hudak’s suggestion (but also far less catchy).

It’s a lot of money. We assume the government doesn’t stop spending the money after 5 p.m. or take weekends off. So $1.5 million being spent every hour of all 365 days equals $13.14 billion (I told you it’s a lot of money).

If you use $1.43 million then it equals $12,526,800,000 – roughly the size of the Ontario deficit.

Truthiness level: Medium.

“We have 100,000 more bureaucrats than we did in 2009 but our hospitals are even more overcrowded.”

Note (June 05): The Progressive Conservative Party provided new data from two different Statistics Canada data sets to arrive at their claim of 100,000 employees. They compare the number of provincial employees from August 2009 to January 2014, which is an increase of 102,137. However, if you compare January 2009 to January 2014 that number shrinks to 73,377. 

Truthiness level: Medium to high.

Hospital overcrowding

Hudak also says hospitals in Ontario are more overcrowded today than they were in 2009. Ontario has approximately 2.4 hospital beds per thousand people – far below the Canadian average of 3.9 per thousand people.

The number of people waiting for a bed has also increased since 2005, according to a report in the Toronto Star.

And Ontario has far fewer beds than it did in 1990. But Pat Campbell, the president of the Ontario Health Association told the Star this isn`t necessarily a bad thing because more surgeries are being done on an outpatient basis.

Truthiness level: High.