Kirk Macdonald is advising everyone to go to Statistics Canada to check out how great New Brunswick’s economy is doing. He may want to retract that little recommendation as going there will reveal serious export troubles, fast rising poverty, the lowest rates of Internet usage in Canada, depopulation, etc.
Apparently Macdonald and Jeannot Volpe have an ‘alternate’ Statistics Canada that no one else knows about. From this morning’s T&T:
Finance Minister Jeannot Volpé he doesn’t know where Graham got his figures and he highlighted new numbers showing New Brunswickers are near the top of the list when it comes to household income.
It must have been these numbers – out just two weeks ago – showing the province 8th out of 10 provinces for after tax income. That study revealed other interesting facts. Why does the average NB family require 23% more government transfers than the average Nova Scotia family? Why does the average NB family pay 13% less income taxes than the average Nova Scotia family?
Volpe and Macdonald better provide the URL to this alternate Statistics Canada source.