A story posted yesterday by CBC Prince Edward Island starts:

An international accounting firm has ranked Charlottetown the second best city in the G7 countries to set up a business.

Later in the story, we read:

Officials at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, who plan to take the study on the road to trade shows and business conferences, are affirmed that they have been right all along.

“Wow!” you might think: reading that lead, and the rest of the story, you might think, quite reasonably, that Charlottetown is “the second best city in the G7 countries to set up a business.”

And you would be wrong.

Here’s why.

First, the study, “Competitive Alternatives,” (which you can read here) was actually partially sponsored by ACOA (here’s the list of sponsors), so their enthusiasm is to be expected. The CBC story never reveals that ACOA was a sponsor. Of course neither does the ACOA news release.

If you dig through ACOA’s website, though, you come across this, in their Parliamentary Report, 1998-2003, referencing earlier versions of the same KPMG study:

The Agency participated as a sponsor in both the 1999 and 2001 studies in an effort to ensure the inclusion of Atlantic Canadian communities.

So ACOA basically bought its way into the study. That’s important, and the CBC should have picked up on that.

Second, the study only covered the 121 cities in the G7 countries that were willing to pay (or “sponsor”). That’s a very small slice of the G7. For example, in the “New England/Atlantic” area, the study only compares Burlington, Lewiston, St. John’s, Halifax, Moncton, Charlottetown, Hartford, Providence and Boston. It’s quite possible, as a result, that Fredericton, Brantford, Regina, or any of the hundreds of other cities in the G7 they didn’t survey, would rank better than Charlottetown.

Third, the study compares only “the after-tax cost of startup and operation for representative business operations in 12 industries, over a 10-year time horizon.” That might mean that Charlottetown is a cheap place to do business; it certainly doesn’t prove that Charlottetown is the best place to do business: the study didn’t look at environment, lifestyle, health care, labour standards, work force or any of the myriad other measures that might go into making for a successful business. KPMG makes that clear in their study; the CBC glossed over this in their story.

Indeed, given that the study says that labour “represents 56 to 72 percent of location-sensitive costs for manufacturing operations, and 75 to 85 percent for non-manufacturing operations,” what the study really reveals, perhaps, is that Charlottetown employers don’t pay their employees very well. The CBC story might very well have been titled “Study reveals Charlottetown workers second worst paid in G7.” But of course that’s not what the news release said.

Finally, the study itself cautions about interpretation of the results:

While care has been taken in developing these findings, the results are necessarily of a general nature and should not be interpreted as a definitive opinion on the merits of locating any specific facility in one jurisdiction as compared to another.

In light of this proviso, the CBC’s headline, “Set up shop in Charlottetown: report” reflects a misinterpretation of the study.

I expect the CBC to do more than republish KPMG and ACOA’s propaganda: by doing so, the CBC serves only to reinforce the reputation of the study. This is a disservice to we taxpayers who paid for the study, a disservice to potential businesses who rely on the results of the study and, ultimately, a disservice to ACOA, which is freed from the responsibility that deeper media oversight would engender.

As of 3:30 p.m. today (Friday, Feb. 20, 2004), downtown Charlottetown is still pretty closed down, post-blizzard.

Tim Horton’s on Kent St. has been open all day, and there’s a steady from of customers. Timothy’s and the Formosa Tea House are both closed.

All of the stores in the Confederation Court Mall are closed for the day, with the exception of Shoppers Drug Mart and Nature’s Harvest (although Nature’s Harvest might close early: I was their first customer in a couple of hours).

There appears to be at least one lane open on most of the streets downtown, although there are plenty of huge snowbanks all over the place, and the sidewalks are hard to navigate.

Here’s Kent Street, looking west from the pedway:

One of the many benefits of having a neighbour with a Bobcat is that your sidewalk gets blown out early:

The sidewalks along the east side of University Avenue hadn’t been plowed as of noon today (I’m not complaining, just commenting: there’s one hell of a lot of snow to get moved, and the City is doing an admirable job). Here’s what it looked like:

On the left: my boots and Catherine’s snowshoes after my 15 foot attempt to get to work. On the right: the view out our front door of our neighbour’s compost bins, left in the driveway.

There is a mighty storm happening around us. This isn’t some sort of minor-league “a little snow” kind of storm: it’s a “we can’t open our front door” storm. No snow plows. No police. Tried to get to work, but turned back after about 15 feet. So far, though, we have power. Will hunker down and watch the SponsorGate hearings on Newsworld.

Okay, this is cool: Teleport lets you use one keyboard and mouse to control two Macs, over Ethernet. It’s impossible to do justice to how useful it is until you’ve set it up, and have your iMac and iBook side by each. If you have two Macs, you should try it out. [found on MacOSXHints.com]

At the New Years Levee held by Premier Pat Binns, Brian Simpson, the excellent Provincial Photographer, was taking pictures of every attendee. This was a huge challenge, as I’m sure there were at least 500 citizens paying their respects.

About a month after the levee, using some highly sophisticated identity matching system, every person who had their photograph taken received a personal note, signed by the Premier, with a copy of the photo, in the mail.

Here is mine:

Notice several interesting aspects of the photo:

• I am paying attention to the photographer, the Premier is not; as a result, it looks like I’m not paying attention to the Premier.
• I am wearing my famous green cardigan (the one that Ian and the Bishop have complimented me on, and that Daniel seems to think disqualifies me from being able to start a rock band if this web thing doesn’t work out).
• I have a weird grin on my face. This might be partially explained by my partial drunkenness.
• For some reason, I appear to look a lot more like Father Mulcahy than I’m comfortable with.
• The Premier appears to be slipping me a $100 bill. In fact he slipped me a limited edition Prince Edward Island pin.
• My natty green shirt is by Simons Montreal.

If you come a-leveeing next year, you’ll be able to get your very own picture!

Aliant unveils a special “trial” of WiFi, with one hotspot in Charlottetown.

I guess they’re holding off to see if this WiFi thing really takes off.