In many jurisdictions you can trust the research that the Government does concerning social issues because the branch of the Government that does the research and the reporting are at an arm’s length from the political process. Relatively independent researchers comb through statistics, work out the processes behind the statistics and report without any spin whatsoever. Not so in BC. We can’t trust our Government because they put politics over ethics. A good example is the Government lies about drinking and driving.
The first thing you need to remember is that the police collect the information that forms the statistics. They have a huge interest in bolstering public support for the IRP scheme.
Many police officers are wonderful balanced people who view their job as a job and who arrive at work each day without a chip on their shoulder. Some are psychos on a power trip. In a sense it’s no different than working in any organization, except that it seems to attract people who want to exercise control. So most police officers get upset when they have to go to court and be cross examined. They don’t like to be the ones having to answer questions and they don’t like that in court they don’t have control over others. With the IRP scheme, even the dirtiest cop can get away with anything. And they never need to answer for their behaviour. So in general most police officers support the scheme because it’s easy and there’s no accountability.
And the police are the ones who collect the stats. We have noted in the past that even the slightest suggestion of alcohol in a vehicle accident death case would lead the police to record the accident as alcohol related. By ignoring the cases where alcohol was barely an issue, if at all, they can create a completely false impression that drinking and driving deaths have dropped substantially. So the police are the first ones who are motivated to create false statistics and they have the power to decide what will be included in the statistics.
Because the police collect the statistics and they have an interest in the results, the foundation of any analysis is already fundamentally compromised. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.
Our Government is deeply linked with the police. Officers have reported to us that they speak with the Office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles every week. The chief of police in Victoria, that fellow who plays loose with his handgun, has a great deal of influence in this Government and he is an outspoken supporter of the IRP scheme.
The previous Solicitor General, Rich Colman, a former RCMP officer, was an advocate in cabinet for punishing people using ASDs.
Former police officers are the ones who are actually responsible for the IRP scheme. They are former cops who became politicians so they could inflict their view of things on you and me.
So the evidence offered by the police is unreliable. And the police are involved in the political process. Whenever the Government tries to influence public opinion with Government lies about drinking and driving, remember that the people who collect the information have an interest in providing misleading information. They are not disinterested social scientists. The people who collect the information are the police who are connected to the Government and who work to support the Government spin.
In a future blog post we’ll explain the reasons why DUI accident deaths are down, aside from unreliable statistics collected by the police.