Me Vs. Dalton's Press Drones

I'm sure this isn't news to anyone, but Dalton has some pretty dumb people working in his media office.

One of the quickest ways to get these orcs to attack you is to challenge Dalton's utterly false claim that Ontario has somehow "added more jobs than the US and Canada combined." This grandiose claim is designed to make you, John Q. Uninformed Voter, say, "More jobs than Canada and the US combined?!?! Wow! That's great!"

I began with a fairly harmless tweet saying that Hudak's Small Business Bill of Rights, when implemented, will help remove the stranglehold on small businesses in our province. I also theorized that not making life impossible for small businesses would help create jobs.

At this point, the antennae of one of Dalton's media people (Jane Almeida, Brad Hammond, or Leslie O'Leary- hey guys!) twitched, and they replied with this nugget:

"@JustJoshinYa #Ontario leads N. America is job creation. In June Ont create more jobs than US & CDN combined. #onpoli"

You know what isn't in that statement? Any proof. So I asked for some. And what do you know? They actually replied:

"@JustJoshinYa #Ontario created more jobs in June than CDN & US combined. Latest from Stats Can: http://bit.ly/1RrUb #onpoli"

Well, now we have another problem. StatsCan doesn't track US data, so how do I know we added more jobs than two countries combined? Obviously just a small oversight by three people who are paid very well to defend Dalton from meanies like me in the right-wing media. So I very nicely asked for some US data. And, finally, I got some:

"@JustJoshinYa http://1.usa.gov/Y7H1X the latest from the bureau of labour statistics in US. #onpoli"

This is how Dalton's press people do their jobs. Hey, I have a poem too: "When the calendar says October 6/Dalton McGuinty can hit the bricks!"

Absolutely marvelous! Now I have Canadian and US data so I can say with certainty that the claim is crap because Dalton's drones are taking all the jobs added AND all the jobs lost for both countries in June, subtracting the jobs lost from the jobs gained, and comparing that number to the number of jobs gained in Ontario. In other words, they're comparing one data point to a lot of data points. Not only that, but how can you compare 13 million Ontarians to 300 million Americans?

Oddly enough, Dalton's people had no answer to that one.  

P.S. If you're not doing so already, follow me at @JustJoshinYa! Clever handle, isn't it? ;)