Media Clipping — Wednesday, May 2, 2001, The Daily News, Halifax

Well-being gets Reality Check

By David Swick

GPI Atlantic, the folks giving all our heads a shake by creating a Genuine Progress Index for Nova Scotia, may soon have a new way to get its message across.

GPI Atlantic has joined forces with one of Toronto's best-known non-profits, the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, to create a prototype publication: Reality Check: The Canadian Review of Well-being.

Ron Colman of GPI Atlantic edited the first edition of Reality Check, which has been mailed to 2,000 Canadian opinion leaders: members of Parliament and legislatures, public policy experts, leaders of organizations and journalists.

Atkinson is now seeking comments for possible improvements. Reality Check's unabashed intent is to influence the way Canadians measure well-being. The conventional way uses only materialist indicators, i.e. economic growth rates. This is a wacky way to measure. Anything we spend money on counts as a good thing, including crime, accidents and sickness.

Many positives, meantime, are ignored: the time kids and parents spend together, for example, or volunteering. "Canadians are volunteering a lot less than they used to, indicating a possible loss of community strength," Colman says in the premiere issue of Reality Check.

"Because it is not counted, it is doubtful whether policy makers in Ottawa are even aware of this 8.7 per cent decline in voluntary work."

For more information, visit GPI's Web site: www.gpiatlantic.org.

Copyright © 2001, The Daily News

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