Elections Canada evening the score
One thing that Conservative governments have in common, whether they are federal or provincial, is an inherit distrust of both the media and the bureaucracy. And no wonder. Both institutions tend to be decidedly anti-Conservative.

Polls of working journalists, both in Canada and the United States, have consistently shown that the vast majority of journalists - usually in the 90-percentile range - consider themselves liberal.

This is likely even more true in Canada than it is in the U.S. where, despite the preponderance of liberal journalists, there are a high number of prominent conservative talk show hosts and general media commentators.

Not so in this country, particularly on the CBC, which tends to view conservatives as a four-letter word.

While most people would likely acknowledge that the media overall leans somewhat to the left, it is likely also true that they're not that concerned about it because they have little expectation that the media presents a fair and balanced view of the issues.

When it comes to officialdom, however, people tend to think there is a balance.

Well, there isn't.

From the judiciary on down, through such institutions as Elections Canada, human rights organizations and, as we've just seen last week, even Statistic Canada, there is an inherent liberal bias in their general approach to their responsibilities.

It is surely obvious even to the most anti-conservative Canadians out there that the current Elections Canada actions against the Conservative Party over alleged election spending irregularities is hardly a neutral affair. The very fact that this body is persecuting, er prosecuting the Tories for accounting procedures used by the other parties as well - plus the fact that the media and the Liberals were tipped off so they could be on hand for the RCMP raid on Tory headquarters - should tell you everything you need to know about the desire of Elections Canada bureaucrats to even the score against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's earlier criticisms of their activities.

But now Statistics Canada, the so-called bastion of non-political statistics, has also shown its true colours in its recent handling of Canadian income statistics.

In one of the more shameless displays of the old adage of - lies, damn lies and statistics, - Stats Cans claim that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer is a statistical trick equivalent to a world class figure skater successfully landing a quad in competition.

And naturally, the bulk of the media bought it.

Last Fridays Globe and Mail, for example, filled most of its front page with the startling "news" that the media income from 1980 to 2005 in Canada has increased by "53 BUCKS", as they put it.

That's exactly the spin that StatsCan put on their release, so their bureaucrats must be thrilled that the Globe and most other major newspapers - the National Post being a prominent exception - put on the numbers.

As dramatic as they are - and as useful and self-serving they will be for partisans on the left side of the political spectrum - you don't have to be a working economist to understand how phony the number really is.

Why? Well, for reasons which can only be classified as mischievous at best, StatsCan used individual incomes instead of family incomes - when family incomes cover 87 percent of Canadians - and they only count earnings or employment income, instead of income fro all sources such as investments and - the most egregious oversight of all - from government.

So what does that really mean? Well, when StatsCan says that poor people are getting poorer, that's only because they aren't counting either their social assistance or pensions, or anything else beyond earned income.

And since government transfer payments alone account for $52 of every $100 received by families in the lowest income groups, then by the simple expedient of not counting this as income, of course the poorer people are falling further behind on paper even though, in reality, the opposite is true.

There's much more, but you get the point. Unless, of course, you're like most of the media and the bulk of the bureaucracy, who aren't interested in reality.