{"id":7556,"date":"2015-04-25T06:49:42","date_gmt":"2015-04-25T11:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7556"},"modified":"2015-04-25T06:49:42","modified_gmt":"2015-04-25T11:49:42","slug":"canadas-truthiest-election-campaign-begins-don-pittis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7556","title":{"rendered":"Canada&#8217;s truthiest election campaign begins: Don Pittis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"story-headline\">\n<h3 class=\"story-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/canada-s-truthiest-election-campaign-begins-don-pittis-1.3043785\" target=\"_blank\">Canada&#8217;s truthiest election campaign begins: Don Pittis<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"story-deck\"><strong>True or not, politicians defend their promises with passion and confidence<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Harper Conservatives are the balanced-budget party. You might as well get that into your head now, because you are going to be hearing it repeated till election day.<\/p>\n<p>This is also the economic stewardship party,\u00a0the spending-on-transit party\u00a0and\u00a0the party fighting for the poor and middle class. Yesterday,\u00a0Finance Minister Joe Oliver even implied they were the\u00a0fight-against-climate-change party.<\/p>\n<p>An independent analyst might dispute those statements.\u00a0In fact, independent analysts in newspapers and columns across the country have been doing\u00a0just that this week following Oliver&#8217;s federal\u00a0budget.\u00a0But in what is shaping up to be Canada&#8217;s\u00a0&#8220;truthiest&#8221; election campaign, scientific evidence doesn&#8217;t strictly matter.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/joe-oliver-s-promises-kept-budget-ignore-the-sleight-of-hand-1.3043145\">Joe Oliver&#8217;s budget: Ignore the sleight of hand<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>\n<div><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/federal-budget-2015-conservatives-dig-into-contingency-to-hit-surplus-1.3041628\">Conservatives dig into contingency to hit surplus<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Truthiness, as coined by\u00a0U.S. comedian Stephen\u00a0Colbert, is something expressed as a truth because it is a\u00a0feeling from the heart\u00a0without\u00a0evidence or logic.<\/p>\n<p>After reading a wonderful piece\u00a0by\u00a0Oxford economist\u00a0John\u00a0Kay\u00a0called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/005d1752-e75c-11e4-8e3f-00144feab7de.html#axzz3Y2iuirho\">How beliefs became truths for\u00a0the political establishment<\/a>,&#8221;\u00a0it struck me that this is exactly what we are seeing\u00a0in our own\u00a0Canadian (pre-)\u00a0election\u00a0campaign.<\/p>\n<p>As well as claiming a balanced budget, Oliver promised spending on transit and other\u00a0infrastructure and tax breaks that would stimulate the economy. But\u00a0there may be less substance\u00a0to these boasts\u00a0than appear.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada&#8217;s truthiest election campaign begins: Don Pittis True or not, politicians defend their promises with passion and confidence The Harper Conservatives are the balanced-budget party. You might as well get that into your head now, because you are going to be hearing it repeated till election day. This is also the economic stewardship party,\u00a0the spending-on-transit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[103,3544,4936,253,2285,2183,1577,749,4935],"class_list":["post-7556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-canada","tag-cbc","tag-don-pittis","tag-elections","tag-joe-oliver","tag-political-class","tag-politicians","tag-stephen-harper","tag-truthiness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7557,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7556\/revisions\/7557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}