Morneau’s gender-based evidence making

You may recall back in the mists of time certain concerns about the Harper government’s untutored disregard for statistical purity. Those dark days are thankfully behind us, or so we’re repeatedly assured. Ottawa now puts evidence first.

The federal Liberals’ deep respect for statistical knowledge is drilled into anyone reading last month’s budget. The federal government is “placing evidence at the centre of program evaluation and design,” it reads. And Statistics Canada is a big beneficiary of this commitment, through ample funding for new statistical centres and other efforts meant to inform Canadians and their governments, including the all-new Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics.

Unfortunately, it turns out the Trudeau government’s respect for the sacredness of evidence extends only as far as Liberal policy exigencies are concerned. Where proper statistical analysis conflicts with a maniacal obsession with gender gaps, fallacy now triumphs over fact.

The most striking number in the 2018 federal budget is the massive 31-per-cent figure the finance department repeatedly uses to describe the gender-earnings gap. “On average, women earn just 69 cents for every dollar earned by men on an annual basis,” Finance Minister Bill Morneau scolded in his budget speech. “That’s not right.”

That’s correct — his figure for the gender earnings gap is absolutely. And StatCan offers the evidence necessary to prove it’s wrong.

Last year StatCan produced a lengthy and thorough examination of gender differences in employment and earnings across time, occupations, sectors and demographic factors. The report, “Women and Paid Work,” explicitly advises against using annual earnings to describe the gap between male and female income, which Morneau nevertheless does in his budget.

“Annual earnings are a problematic measure of gender-based pay inequality,” Some may argue any size gap is a problem. Fair enough. But Morneau has clearly picked the biggest number he could find — nearly three times larger than the credible statistic — for reasons of politics and marketing. In doing so, he is deliberately ignoring the advice of his government’s own statistical agency. So much for “placing evidence at the centre” of government efforts.

This isn’t the first time the Trudeau government has cast aside StatCan evidence when it conflicts with policy goals. It did the same thing with a special inflation rate for seniors’ benefits earlier in depends on uncovering a steady stream of ever-larger and more worrisome differences in outcomes between white males and everyone else. Is it overly cynical to suggest the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics could soon decide that, like Morneau, it prefers annual earnings over hourly wages as the best measure of gender earnings? OK, maybe. But if the policy prescriptions are to be the same regardless of what the numbers say, then we might as well go with the biggest possible numbers.

Despite its alleged commitment to equity, however, there are limits to Ottawa’s gap fixation: It seems that only gaps that reveal a disadvantage for women are deserving of policy interventions. Wherever women face a purported problem of inequality, such as university enrolment in STEM subjects, entrepreneurship or pay gaps, the Liberals are ready with an immediate policy remedy. The budget even notes women are less likely than men to volunteer as sports-team coaches, and proposes $30 million over three years to fix this situation. On the other hand, significant gaps in outcomes for men are treated as an unfixable status quo. The budget’s gender-analysis section blandly notes men have lower rates of high school graduation, lower rates of university enrolment and die younger than women. Oh well. Yawn.

If the budget revealed females were dying four years sooner than males, maybe then we’d see the gender death gap declared a national crisis. But worrying about men kicking off early doesn’t offer any political benefit to Liberals. But then, the 2018 budget does propose a $75 million pilot project to support senior women in New Brunswick who face the “challenge” of outliving their husbands. Long live the gap.