Media Clipping — Wednesday, July 18, 2001, The Daily News, Halifax

Not the enemies you’d think

In fact, tonight StatsCan director will be GPI’s guest

By David Swick

When Hans Messinger crunches numbers, people listen. Government and business need to know if our national production is growing, or slowing down, and by how much. Messinger is the director of the 50-person Statistics Canada department that calculates the gross domestic product (GDP).

Today, he will be in French Village on St. Margaret's Bay, the guest of honour at a party hosted by Ron Colman, head of GPI Atlantic. That's the non-profit research group working to develop a Genuine Progress Index for Nova Scotia, whose number crunching has calculated the value of volunteer work, the cost of crime and the money wasted on unwanted Christmas presents.

Huh? I might have expected Statistics Canada to regard GPI Atlantic as the enemy, as the anti-Statscan. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Messinger and Colman have been friends for four years, since Colman called him up one day. And they have become colleagues, too: Messinger now sits on the GPI Atlantic board.

"We don't pretend that the GDP is anything more than it is," Messinger said over coffee yesterday. "It measures the total value of production in our economy. And GPI Atlantic knows that, yes, it's important to measure how the economy performs. It's a major source of government revenues, which allows government to establish policies and programs that are there to protect society, the environment, and so forth.

"At the same time, GPI brings an awareness that there are important social and environmental issues in society, like sustainable development and health and well-being. I think what GPI is saying is that the economy is only one part of a much larger picture.

"I see the work of GPI Atlantic as being very, very complementary. They're effectively bringing pieces of the picture together, in more focus. Particularly in Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada."

Messinger's career has included both big picture economics and social policy. He set up Statscan's program measuring interprovincial trade flow and has also worked with the Economic Council of Canada, considering income inequality and poverty.

One of the reasons he likes GPI Atlantic is because its methodology follows exacting standards. This can't be said for every organization busy crunching numbers.

"There is scope to take good, clean statistics and bias the view that comes out of it," he said. "When the Genuine Progress Index first came out, in the U.S. back in '96, with the slogan, If the GDP is up, why is America down?, I reviewed the underlying methodology for that in some depth. It was based on some very creative and solid ideas, but at the same time the bottom-line measure had a lot of problems.

"It used some inappropriate accounting techniques, and some very subjective prices for things you normally can't price, like environmental impact. So it was adding apples and oranges ... As well, there was no relation to health at all, which most Canadians and Americans would put high on their list of priorities. It basically ignored human capital, and counted other natural resources."

GPI Atlantic, Messinger said, combines the best part of the original GPI's creativity with solid methodology. "I've reviewed all of these (reports) before release, and had some of my colleagues who might have more expertise in certain areas review some, too. GPI Atlantic is putting out some excellent pieces of work."

Copyright © 2001, The Daily News

Geniune Progress Index Media Coverage