Robert Fulford writes:"We learned this week that Canada is in deep trouble and badly needs help. Canadians, according to a new report, work too hard at inconvenient hours and find it impossible to balance the demands of families, employers and themselves. This degrades our health and leaves us unsatisfied with our lives.
"At least 131 newspapers and broadcasters spread this word. The Toronto Star placed it on the front page. The Globe and Mail did better, giving it 1,200 words and a heading, “Why our well-being hangs in the balance.” It certainly sounded like a crisis.
"Not one of the many news stories I saw raised a single question about the report’s content. The media bought it outright (the Post ran a brief item). It all sounded to me like a rewrite of several hundred articles I’ve read over many years but in fact it emanated from the Institute of Wellbeing, founded last year, and its self-described “signature product,” the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW). The Atkinson Foundation, backed by the Toronto Star, organized the Institute and partly funds it. It’s affiliated with the University of Waterloo but its offices are in the Star building in Toronto. . . .
"The report reads like a parody of sociology. It contains absurdly precise statistics that can’t be precisely measured: “The proportion of males and females experiencing high levels of ‘time crunch’ grew from 16.4% in 1992 to 19.6% in 2005.” Thank you, Mr. Science. But that means only that more people in 2005 than in 1992 believed they were pressed for time. My guess is that they spent too much of their time reading feature stories about over-stressed families. They may be, as Romanow would say, 'increasingly exceeding recommended times.'”
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