PRESS RELEASE

Nova Scotia Genuine Progress Index – Summary of Selected Results

Nova Scotia – measuring genuine progress
First annual report

Report to the NS Voluntary Planning Agency Annual General Meeting
29 May, 2001

How are we doing as a province? Are we better off than we were ten years ago? Are we leaving this province a better place for our children? Are we moving forward confidently with a sense of vision, purpose and direction?

These are simple, basic questions on the minds of every Nova Scotian citizen. If we can’t answer these questions clearly, we will at best stumble into the new millennium without any sense of direction, and with no effective guide for policy makers. At worst, we will unknowingly make grievous mistakes for which our children will pay. We may hope for the best. But how do we really tell how we are doing as a province and whether we are making genuine progress?

Generally, we answer these questions with a narrow set of market statistics: If the economy is growing, we assume we are "better off." But we can degrade our forests, sell off our natural resources, have more crime, sickness, stress and pollution, watch our communities disintegrate, and the economy will keep right on growing. In fact, many of these liabilities actually spur economic growth because they stimulate spending on prisons, hospitals, toxic waste cleanup, and Prozac.

At the same time, our market statistics ignore powerful strengths of which Nova Scotia can be rightly proud and which can be the basis of future prosperity, security and community wellbeing – assets like our voluntary work and community service, for example.

GPI Atlantic, a non-profit research group is developing a Genuine Progress Index for Nova Scotia, consisting of 22 social, economic and environmental indicators, that can give us a better, more accurate, and more comprehensive idea of how we are really doing than the conventional economic growth statistics.

This is a pilot project for Canada and is still in development. But the NS Voluntary Planning Agency has asked GPI Atlantic to summarize some of the preliminary results and conclusions discovered so far. As GPI Atlantic is developing each component of the index separately in considerable detail, this is actually the first time that these results are being presented in a composite form. We hope to provide Voluntary Planning with annual updates in future years, so that the Agency can play a key role in providing Nova Scotians with this information.

Here we look at four key indicators of community wellbeing – the strength of our voluntary sector, how safe and secure our communities are, the quality of our water, and the health of our population. Other GPI results can be found on the GPI Atlantic website at www.gpiatlantic.org.

Voluntary Work

The strength of our voluntary sector tells us a lot about the strength of our communities and our social support network. It tells us about our generosity and care for one another. And it tell us about the extent of our civic participation, which in turn is a powerful indicator of the strength of democracy itself.

Nova Scotians put in 140 million hours of voluntary work each year, the highest rate of voluntary work in the country. That is the equivalent of 83,000 jobs. If that voluntary work were replaced for pay, it would be worth $1.9 billion to the provincial economy, the equivalent of nearly 10% of our GDP, and more than the combined value of all government services – federal, provincial and municipal.

The average Nova Scotian puts in 183 hours of voluntary work each year, 43% more than the national average, providing first aid and health services, staffing food banks, soup kitchens and help lines, providing counseling, literacy programs, arts and culture, coaching sports teams, fighting fires, doing search and rescue, working for the environment, helping the sick, elderly and disabled, and making their communities better places to live.

Even though it contributes directly to our standard of living and quality of life, all that voluntary work remains invisible and unvalued in our standard growth statistics because it is not paid. And so the 8.7% decline in voluntary services across Canada since 1992 remained unnoticed, not discussed in any legislature or any media outlet, even though Canadians lost the equivalent of $4.7 billion worth of services. The only provinces to buck the national trend were Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Although our voluntary sector is stronger here than anywhere else in Canada, Nova Scotians cannot take it for granted. Volunteer surveys show that even here, "formal" volunteer work for non-profit organizations has declined by 7.2% since 1987. It is our "informal" voluntary work (given directly to others, not through any organization) that has risen dramatically, probably in response to the de-institutionalization of our health care system and the growth of home care.

Peace and Security

How safe and secure we feel in our communities is a mark of our quality of life. Here in Nova Scotia, the picture is mixed. We were once much safer than other Canadians. Twenty-five years ago, our overall crime rate was less than two-thirds the national average. Today it is 98% of the national average. Serious violent crimes are still 37% below the national average. Since 1991 our overall crime rate has fallen by 16%, a modest mark of progress, but we are still three times more likely to be victims of crime today than our parents were a generation ago.

We are still a much more peaceful society than the United States, with only one-sixth the rate of serious violent crimes. The U.S. has 3.5 times as many homicides per 100,000 people as Nova Scotia, and five times as many robberies. We imprison our citizens at one-twelfth the rate of the

USA, which now has more than two million prisoners, one quarter of all prisoners in the world today. One out of every 135 Americans is in prison, compared to one in 900 Canadians and one in 1,600 Nova Scotians.

Crime costs Nova Scotians $1.2 billion a year ($3,500 per household), spending that makes the economy grow and is perversely counted as a contribution to economic prosperity. We now need nearly 50% more police per capita than we did 30 years ago. Compared to Canada as a whole, Nova Scotia has 94% as many police officers per 100,000 population as the rest of the country, up from 74% 20 years ago. It costs $44,000 to keep one inmate in prison for a year. From the GPI perspective, the more peaceful and secure our society, the more we save in crime costs, and the more we can spend on more productive activities.

Water Quality

How clean our air and water is matters to Nova Scotians. The quality of our drinking water has improved, with more Nova Scotians now served by municipal supplies conforming to Canadian Drinking Water Quality guidelines than 15 years ago. This means there are fewer water samples that show bacteriological content, lead, turbidity or trihalomethane compounds (THMs).

However, many of our rivers and lakes are in trouble partly due to acid deposition. Brook trout populations have declined by 50% in Nova Scotia rivers, and salmon are now extinct in 22% of our rivers, with another 25% showing depleted stocks and 31% more with only remnant populations. High bacterial levels have also contaminated some marine waters in Nova Scotia, doubling the number of shellfish closures in the past 15 years.

Nova Scotia’s water resources provide an estimated $11.2 billion worth of services to Nova Scotians each year. These remain invisible and unvalued in our standard economic measures, as does the estimated $2.3 billion cost due to water quality decline in the province. Among the most valuable (and neglected) water resources in Nova Scotia are the province’s wetlands which perform a wide range of vital functions, including water purification, flood prevention, erosion prevention, storm control, waste and nutrient cycling, and habitat for wildlife. We have lost more than 20% of our wetlands since colonization, though some wetland restoration is now under way.

Health of Nova Scotians

Nova Scotians have the highest incidence of cancer deaths in the country, the highest rate of smoking and the highest rate of high blood pressure, and we rank second only to New Brunswick in rates of obesity. More Nova Scotian women exercise than 15 years ago, but male rates of physical exercise have declined by 13%. We clearly have a long way to go in improving the health of our population.

Smoking costs Nova Scotia $168 million in direct health care costs, and another $300 million in indirect productivity losses. Obesity, which has doubled from 18% of the population in 1985 to 38% today, costs $120 million in direct health care costs and another $140 million in productivity losses. Prevention is clearly cost-effective.

Conclusion

The purpose of the Genuine Progress Index (GPI) is quite simply to focus attention on core indicators of wellbeing and quality of life. No matter what results we find, there is really no "bad news" in the GPI. Whether we find hidden strengths (like our voluntary work) or hidden weaknesses (like our high rate of obesity), once we shine the spotlight on these vital indicators, we can act decisively to build on our strengths, overcome our weaknesses and improve the wellbeing of all Nova Scotians. The only bad news is when these important realities remain invisible and no action is taken.

We are delighted that the Nova Scotia Voluntary Planning Agency is taking a lead role in disseminating the GPI results to Nova Scotians, and in creating a vision for the province that can improve the wellbeing of all its citizens. Beyond that, the development of the Genuine Progress Index in Nova Scotia can also be a model for Canada that can help the country look beyond materialist measures to broader indicators of our quality of life. Practically speaking, the GPI can also evaluate whether our current social, economic and environmental policies are actually working in producing the desired outcomes and results.

We look forward to a time in the not too distant future when Nova Scotians can confidently answer the questions posed earlier: "Yes, we are "better off" than we were 10 or 20 years ago." And "Yes, we are leaving this province a better place for our children."