519-646-2222Fake News – Sunshine List & Insolvency Numbers
More fake news abounds as, sadly, news media across Canada has become completely unreliable. Here are two examples of lazy reporting creating the impression that things are very different than they actually are.
Last year, MSM reported that some 240,000 people were listed on Ontario’s Sunshine List, which was then, and is now, downloadable in a spreadsheet format. After adjusting the list for inflation, only about ten percent (10%) of the original list remained.
The Sunshine list was established in 1996 by the Mike Harris government, apparently, in order to publicly shame government employees earning over six digit incomes. The idea seemed to be to promote the idea that the previous government had been overly generous with public workers.
Today journalists continue to report the same fake news, that government employees are getting more and more money, year over year, without question. This year they are reporting that there are 267,000 people on the list, a far cry from the actual (factual) number of 283 (yes, two hundred and eighty three) employees who are really earning more than one-hundred-thousand-1996-dollars in 2023. Here are links to three news articles (Toronto Sun, CBC, and CTV) that failed to expose the error and the growing insignificance of the unadjusted Sunshine List.
Even the Unions are shaming people whose 2022 incomes would have equaled $57,022.65 in 1996 – slightly more of the then established Sunshine List. One can only describe this divisive behaviour as shameful, and unbecoming of a union that should be focused on promoting the benefits of its members. Rather, the Union is focused on expanding the list. It is not hard to do the maths, the Bank of Canada has a neat little “Inflation Calculator“, which ironically, itself needs to be updated to reflect many, modern, everyday living costs.
Contrary to the unresearched rubbish reported in the media, in order to qualify for an inflation adjusted Sunshine List in 2023, according to the Bank of Canada, the recipient would need to earn some $175,368.90, and not the mere $100,000 in 1996. At this rate, in another fifty years Ontario’s General Welfare recipients will be on the MSM Sunshine List. The sad reality is that the Sunshine List is not showing how wealthy Canadians are, it is showing, very clearly how rapidly the middleclass is decending into poverty.
Another, poorly researched article is highlighting a year over year increase in insolvency filings. However, as a result of massive quantitative easing efforts during the past three years, insolvency filing rates plummeted dramatically. Insolvency filings are usually linked to increase in credit use, but during the past three years there has been an explosion of credit use that accompanied the decrease in insolvency filings.
For lending markets to be properly balanced, defaults are a sign of good health, indicating a rebirth of clients who had become, for whatever reason, overextended. Pre-lockdowns, and the debt bubble, insolvency filings were (140,858) about 40% higher than they were last year (103,586), so an increase of 30%, over the previous year’s values of 92,572, as reported in the media, is not a negative sign.
An increase of 30% remains insufficient to suggest a return to anything near normal filing levels in relation to current debt volumes. If we took a debt based approach to estimating filing numbers we ought to expect upwards of 200,000 insolvency filings. Consumer debt levels have increased exponentially in the last five years, yet insolvency filings have lagged behind.