Chris Selley: CBC's Vote Compass will only get you lost in the wilderness, again

CBC’s Vote Compass is back for the federal election, promising to “help you explore how your views compare with those of the parties,” and it’s just as silly as in its many previous iterations . More than 1.2 million people have taken the survey, the website claims, and I’m sorry to say none will have emerged any better informed than when they started — which some might argue goes against the public broadcaster’s basic news mandate. It’s not so much torqued toward one party or another as it is incoherent. My favourite question this time around asks Canadians whether they believe “the federal budget deficit should be reduced, even if it leads to fewer public services.” Strongly agree? Strongly disagree? Somewhere in between? If you’re thinking you’ve never heard a mainstream politician support fewer public services, you are correct. The designers of this survey have simply inferred that cuts to the federal budget would lead to fewer public services. This is evidenced by the documentation provided to justify where the Vote Compass, a CBC co-production with Toronto’s Vox Pop Labs, places each party on the agree-or-disagree spectrum. “A new Conservative government will bring common sense back to the budget. We’ll end waste, cap spending, and review all government spending to demand real results for every tax dollar,” the Conservative platform promises . “We will shrink the Liberal deficits and eliminate waste by enacting a one-for-one spending law. Any new spending must be offset by reduced or new revenues.” You will notice that there’s nothing in there about social services. Nevertheless, to Vote Compass, that counts as a “strongly agree” to the question of cutting budgets even if it impacts social services. Perhaps even more absurdly, the Liberals get a “somewhat agree” to the same question based on the following passage from their party platform: “A Mark Carney-led government will balance the operating budget in three years, ensuring responsible financial management while making wise, long-term investments to build for Canada’s prosperity and future. … We will also adopt a fiscal rule to ensure that government dept-to-GDP declines over the budget horizon.” See how that also doesn’t say anything about social services? Yeah. When pollsters ask questions like these, we call them “push polls” — questions designed to elicit a certain result, often by compromising relatively simple questions with poison pills like “even if it leads to fewer public services.” The public broadcaster should be trying to clarify that, not add to it. Two of the 30 questions the compass asks Canadians pertain to transgender rights, which are not even remotely an issue in this election campaign, and which are scarcely mentioned in the two leading parties’ platforms. CBC Vote Compass asks: Should “transgender women … be able to compete in women’s sporting leagues”? The Conservatives score a “strongly disagree” because 17 months ago, Poilievre opined that “female sports, female change rooms (and) female bathrooms should be for females, not for biological males.” But he also said, correctly, that “a lot of the spaces … are provincially and municipally controlled, so it is unclear … what reach federal legislation would have to change them.” And he didn’t propose any such legislation. The compass’s other question is about whether to prohibit gender-dysphoric children from being prescribed puberty blockers. Again, 17 months ago, Poilievre said he was opposed . So he gets a “strongly agree.” The Liberals, meanwhile, score a “strongly disagree” because, also 17 months ago, the previous Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, said the following: “The fact that … Pierre Poilievre want(s) government to take away the option for parents and their vulnerable youth — in consultation with their doctors — to make the right decisions for them is anchored in ideology and is not about protecting the most vulnerable.” Trudeau is no longer part of this government, except in spirit. Why would his personal views, or even those of his government at the time, be probative in the Carney era? Vote Compass’s lonely defenders often point to the fact that political parties are invited to answer all these questions themselves, and their answers are then considered in the compass bearings. But that actually makes it worse: It allows parties to position themselves on an issue without offering anything substantial. They have more than enough opportunities to do that, surely, in every day’s news cycle. There was nothing about housing in this year’s federal Vote Compass. Nothing about defence spending. Nothing about health care except the question of how much private-sector involvement there should be in it. (On that question, the Liberals and Conservatives both rated “about the same as now.” Sometimes even a demagnetized compass gives the right reading.) Another thing it didn’t ask about: CBC’s future. I’m on the fence on that question, but Vote Compass is at the very least a powerful data point in the push for a wholesale, soup-to-nuts, no-sacred-cows mandate review. National Post cselley@postmedia.com

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