When somebody says the data backs them up, ask which dataset. When a policy supposedly did not work, ask which policy, and what the alternative produced. When things have supposedly deteriorated, the question is against what baseline, and in which year.
None of those questions require expertise or hostility, and a startling share of what passes for argument in this country cannot answer any of them.
Key facts
- The piece gives four questions to ask of any sweeping claim, which number, which year, compared with what, and says who.
- A claim with evidence behind it does not flinch when someone asks for the source.
- The same standard applies to arguments made on Alberta’s behalf, including ones you already agree with.
- A rounded figure repeated enough times can harden into a fact, and one bad figure lets an opponent dismiss the good ones.
Vague Arguments Hate Details
Asking for a specific gets treated as bad faith. Somebody makes a sweeping claim, you ask which figure they mean, and suddenly you are the difficult one in the conversation. That reaction is worth noticing, because a claim with something behind it does not flinch when you ask. The person who has read the table is usually pleased somebody wants to see it.
The flinch is information. It tells you the position was assembled out of impressions rather than evidence, and that the speaker has never actually checked whether it holds.
This Cuts Both Ways
Here is the harder part, and it is the part worth taking seriously if the standard is going to mean anything. It applies to arguments you already agree with.
Plenty of claims made on Alberta’s behalf are true and load-bearing. The equalization figures are published on a federal website and check out. The federal payroll numbers come from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Those arguments get stronger, not weaker, when somebody asks for the source, because the source exists.
Other claims that circulate in the same conversations are approximations that hardened into facts through repetition. A number gets rounded up in one telling, rounded up again in the next, and eventually shows up in a comment section as though it came off a statement. Anyone making the case for this province is better served by dropping those than by defending them, because one bad figure is enough to let an opponent dismiss the ten good ones sitting beside it.
The Standard Is Cheap and It Works
Which number, which year, compared with what, and says who. Those four questions need no expertise, and they do more to clean up an argument than any amount of volume.
Demanding a specific is the only reliable way to learn whether a claim rests on anything, and that includes the claims you arrived with. A province that wants to be taken seriously in a national conversation gets there by being the side that brought the receipts, not the side that shouted with more conviction.
Related from Alberta Tribune: Ask Which Part of the Good Ol Days You Actually Want Back
