Wag the Dog - Revisited

An article in June called "Wag the Dog" argued that a story by CBC used poor methodology in a story on MLS prices in Canada. The story compared The Province of Newfoundland and Labrador with cities (not provinces) in the rest of Canada. The article asserts that MLS prices in Newfoundland and Labrador are very low relative to the other numbers. This indicates poor economic growth. In fact if that article had properly compared The city of St. John's with other cities, Newfoundland and Labrador would not have appeared in such a negative light.

I offer this most recent story from CBC to illustrate my point:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2006/09/13/assessments-city.html

As it turns out there is an average assessment increase of 22% over three years in 'ol Sin John's. Since growth has been steady over those three years it is fair to say that there has been a growth of over 7% each year. Now when we go back to the stats from the "Wag the Dog" article we see that the city of St. John's is very much in keeping with Halifax-Dartmouth.

That's a spin you are not likely to see in any national CBC story on MLS prices.