Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks at the Ciociaro Club in Windsor on July 16, 2026. Photo by DAN JANISSE/WINDSOR STAR FILES

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Sir John Cowperthwaite, who was financial secretary of Hong Kong from 1961 to 1971, was known to resist collecting economic statistics because he believed if civil servants had data, they would abuse it to expand government intervention.

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The fear that economic data in the hands of government could lead to more central planning is not misplaced. Canadian politicians today, if they do not abuse statistics to justify expanded central planning, often twist them to produce impressive-sounding but entirely misleading claims about the supposed brilliance of their interventions. The Progressive Conservative government in Ontario, the NDP government in British Columbia, the Liberal government in Ottawa — they all do it, and so do many others.

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Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford boasted: “In July, Ontario added 52,000 new jobs, accounting for nearly 70 per cent of all job creation across Canada. We’re protecting Ontario by creating more opportunities for workers and families.” This was based on the latest monthly Statistics Canada data release, which showed that on a seasonally adjusted basis employment grew by 51,600 month-over-month in Ontario and 75,100 across Canada. Ford’s math is right — 51,600 divided by 75,100 is 68.7 per cent, or “nearly 70 per cent” — but the calculation is meaningless.

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Applying the same math to the previous month’s data, employment fell by 16,700 in Ontario but increased by 18,200 nationally, so Ontario accounted for negative 92 per cent of national job creation in June. If Doug Ford and members of his government widely shared that statistic a month ago, I missed it. In reality, using volatile monthly numbers to make any grand claims is a mistake and the “per cent of all job creation across Canada” calculation makes little sense. If employment in Alberta declines in a given month, Ontario would account for a greater per cent of monthly national jobs growth. Does that mean Ontario’s economic policies worked better that month?

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A much more relevant statistic than Ford’s boast about a single month’s employment change is that in the 98 months since he became premier in June 2018, Ontario’s reported employment rate — the share of its working-age population employed — exceeded the national average only once: in December 2021 when it was 62.0 per cent versus just 61.9 per cent nationally. Congratulations, premier! And despite Ontario’s employment “success” this July, its employment rate has lagged Canada’s by 0.8 percentage points on average over the past year. That’s even worse than former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne’s final 12 months in office, when it underperformed the national average by 0.5 points.

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Of course, Doug Ford isn’t the only politician who twists statistics to boast about things he has no right boasting about. British Columbia’s NDP government recently pointed to new Statistics Canada crime data as evidence its efficacious management and spending programs are responsible for the province’s Crime Severity Index falling in 2025. But while the index for crime severity in B.C. did fall last year, the index for violent crime rose. Even worse, relative to when the NDP took office in 2017, the province’s crime severity index was 6.1 per cent higher and its violent crime severity index fully 31.7 per cent higher. Funny, the government isn’t claiming credit for that.