The TrudeauMeter uses fact rather than rhetoric to assess election promises: Dale Peacock

John F. Kennedy once said, “Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” Dirty Harry snarled, “Opinions are like a**holes, everybody has one.” I think both men were basically saying that we sometimes offer our opinions before doing the work of truly thinking deeply about an issue. Nowhere is that truer than with politics.

I feel fairly satisfied with the job our prime minister is doing although in a vague kind of way I have a sense that he isn’t moving fast enough. But after reading reams of articles and opinions either lauding him or denouncing him I wanted a more scientific way of looking at the facts. Numbers are scientific and the thing about them is that they are what they are.

I recently stumbled on a site that uses technology to rationally measure how Prime Minster Trudeau is doing on fulfilling his campaign promises. It’s a web tool called www.trudeaumeter.ca. (As an aside, I don’t think that we should necessarily hold politicians accountable for all of their promises either. Yesterday’s objectives aren’t necessarily the ones we should be seeking today. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to change one’s mind.)

The site is truly nonpartisan, so it doesn’t matter where you stand on the political spectrum. The TrudeauMeter is a sort of Politifact with numbers. The status of any given promise is based exclusively on evidence such as news articles, official government documents, or anything that anyone would agree is concrete evidence.

TrudeauMeter self-identifies as a nonpartisan collaborative citizen initiative that tracks the Trudeau government’s performance with regards to its electoral platform. Dom Barnard, the 32-year old Calgary-based web developer who created the site, explains it this way: “I like to start with the thermometer analogy. We Canadians should all be pretty familiar with it. Whether it shows -30 or +35, a thermometer does just that: it shows the temperature. We can complain about it, be happy about it, or joke about it – but the thermometer doesn’t care. The temperature is what it is – period.”

He was inspired to build this platform by something done by Egyptian activists in 2012. Since last year, the young developer and the small and crazy-smart team he brought on board have shared the code with others and seen other countries effectively implement their own versions of the TrudeauMeter.

The promises made during the election campaign and shortly afterward numbered 223. Of that number 88 haven’t made it out of the gate, 61 are in progress, 44 have been achieved and 30 have been broken.

Further broken down it looks like this by category:

Culture: 3 not started; 5 in progress or achieved; 1 broken
Economy: 19 not started; 31 in progress or achieved; 12 broken
Environment: 9 not started; 17 in progress or achieved; 2 broken
Government: 18 not started; 22 in progress or achieved; 3 broken
Immigration: 5 not started; 6 in progress or achieved; 1 broken
Indigenous People: 6 not started; 8 in progress or achieved; 4 broken
Security: 28 not started; 16 in progress or achieved; 7 broken

The TrudeauMeter doesn’t judge the results per se, although it does give Canadians a place to weigh in. It also doesn’t rate promises based on their importance so you’ll have to dig deeper if you want to see if the things that matter to you have been addressed.

TrudeauMeter is a simple, collaborative, thorough, unbiased, and user-friendly site. He would have started it had the Conservatives remained in power and I have no idea to which party (if any) Barnard belongs.

The postings slowed a bit following the big push to get things done after the election but the site was just re-platformed a few months ago. Now that they are done with the ‘behind the scenes’ work, they are back to updating the TrudeauMeter and keeping those promise statuses in line with reality. The 2017 federal budget impacted many promises and the posts have revved up again. But the entire site is a constantly evolving work.

Canadians are invited to support the site through Patreon, which is an internet-based platform that allows content creators to build their own subscription content service. As they say on the site, “Tracking promises takes time. Each update we make is vetted against multiple sources and we make sure to include reliable sources to justify every promise status change. On top of that, we also have some tech-related fees such as SSL certificates and backend hosting for our code. Our goal is to keep the whole thing running smoothly under the hood so that you may have a great space to learn more about what our government is doing and exchange ideas in the process.”

I became a modest monthly patron last Sunday. This site rocks and I’m not sure why it doesn’t have more people willing to put their money where their mouth is. It’s for anyone who seeks the truth and is willing to expend a bit of effort to find it. Millennials should be all over this. It speaks their language.

The site seems to invite fairly civil discourse; maybe it’s the technical slant or that contributors can flag inappropriate comments. The site developers have established ‘house rules’ to keep the message boards a healthy and respectful environment for discussion.

The Trudeau Liberals still feel fairly new to the role after almost ten years of Conservative governance. Promises were made, hope was restored and changes were pledged. Canadians, however we voted, need to hold our leaders accountable. As Barnard says in the ‘About’ section of his site, “If we truly care about what was said and committed to during the great election campaign we went through, then it’s our job as citizens to track the progress of our own government. Politicians are accountable but so are we.”

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Following a career in the hospitality sector and the acquisition of a law and justice degree in her 50s, Dale embarked on a writing career armed with the fanciful idea that a living could be made as a freelancer. To her own great surprise she was right. The proof lies in hundreds of published works on almost any topic but favourites include travel, humour & satire, feature writing, environment, politics and entrepreneurship. Having re-invented herself half a dozen times, Dale doesn’t rule anything out. Her time is divided equally between Muskoka and Tampa Bay with Jim, her husband of 8 years and partner of 32 years. Two grown ‘kids’ and their spouses receive double doses of love and attention when she’s at home.