Taxing the innumerate

With all the Newfoundland nationalist myths swirling around, it’s almost impossible to find the proximate birth date and place of any of them. Sometimes it’s possible to speculate intelligently on who started a rumour, and when, and why. But it can be hard to prove.

Which is why you should mark yesterday on your calendar: Sunday, May 27, 2007.

The place? The airwaves of VOCM.

The myth?

That Newfoundland and Labrador is getting ripped off on lotto 6/49. And, to boot, that Ontario, and especially Quebec, of course, unfairly benefit.

This is the thesis put forward last night by the myth’s midwife, Linda Swain, who can’t help but notice that Quebecers and Ontarians always seem to win 6/49, and Newfoundlanders and Labradorians never do.

To her credit, Swain mooted the biggest single cause of that observation. Quebec and Ontario has a lot more people, and hence a lot more people available to buy lottery tickets. All things being equal, you should expect Quebec and Ontario to account for most of the jackpot winners, roughly 62% of them. And, all things being equal, NL should account for only about 1.5% of the winning numbers.

But all things are not equal.

Quebecers consistently have a higher participation rate in government-run lotteries such as 6/49 and Super7 than the all-Canada average. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, on the contrary, until recent years have had a consistently lower one.

This CBC report from 2001 illustrates the variation cross the country.

The raw and up-to-date Statscan data, and measuring per-capita instead of per participating household, shows that Quebec, alone among the ten provinces, has consistently had a higher participation rate in government-run lotteries than the national average. With just under 25% of the national population, Quebec has accounted for up to 30% of the spending on government-run lotteries. While that share has slipped in more recent years (Statscan data is available up to 2004), Quebec’s share of national spending on government lotteries has ranged from 2% to 6% higher than its share of the national population.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, on the other hand, participation in such lotteries has, again until recent years, consistently been lower, one to two tenths of a percent lower, than its population share.

There is no conspiracy. The game is not fixed — or at least not in such a way that certain provinces are favoured and others disfavoured.

Indeed, the lottery commentary last night is a classic case of selective evidence. What was one of the dominant stories in the local press in 2001, the year of the CBC report cited above?

Why, it was the extraordinary run of Lotto 6/49 jackpot winners (or sharers) in Newfoundland. In the first six months of the year, winning tickets were sold in, or to people from, Petty Harbour, Stephenville, Glovertown, Goulds, the St. George’s area, and Gander.

There do not appear to have been any media commentary at the time in Quebec, or anywhere else, about how the game was rigged in favour of Newfoundland, and against Quebec.

But never you mind. By the end of this week, the “lotteries are rigged against us” myth will be firmly entrenched in the conspiracy canon, and will be recited as part of the nationalist-cum-separatist catechism for decades to come. Facts? Stats? Who needs ‘em when we have our comfortable little white lies to comfort us in our hour of whine.

It’s a shame, really.

So far both Randy Simms and Linda Swain appeared to have been spared the Bill Rowe Syndrome of buying into, mindlessly repeating, actively promoting, and acting as an echo chamber for the Newfoundland nationalist mythology. Simms and Swain could usually ask pointed, balloon-busting questions.

There’s still hope that the other hosts can avoid catching the crypto-separatists cooties.

But after episodes like last night’s, it’s fading.