It is about time that political communication caught up to medicine by applying modern standards of evidence to its practices.

The practice of medicine has been revolutionised over the last 20 years by the emergence of evidence-based diagnosis and treatment. The idea behind evidence-based medicine is that doctors should apply the findings of scientific research to medical decision-making.When you go to the doctor, you don’t expect to be treated with certain drugs or diagnosed with a certain disease because the doctor thinks it will improve his public image to diagose or treat you that way. You want the right diagnosis and treatment for your symptoms.

Why shouldn’t politics in Canada be held to the same standard?

This is the Internet era. This is the Information Age.

Canadians must demand that its politicians adopt an evidence-based approach to political communication and political decision-making. We expect our doctors to present evidence for their diagnoses, but we allow our politicians – of every stripe – to convince us with anecdotal evidence, generalisations from the specific and a hundred other fallacies of argument.

Gerard Kennedy, Official Opposition critic for Infrastructure and MP for Parkdale-High Park and his team of staff and volunteers have been tearing up the spreadsheets coming up with evidence for how the Conservative Government is distributing infrastructure stimulus money around Canada. His latest press release describes how infrastructure money is being spent unequally, on a per-student basis, on small, conservative institutions based in Conservative-held ridings.

Whether or not you agree with Mr. Kennedy, this is just simply good political communication. He has taken the facts – the data – and parsed them so that they make sense. He has used evidence and simple statistics to start a critical discussion about what the Government is doing. The beauty of Mr. Kennedy’s evidence is that you *can disagree* with him in an intelligent way. You can challenge his evidence. You can produce evidence of your own.

It is no coincidence that Mr. Kennedy has been scooping up news stories and front-pages across Canada with his evidence-based criticism. He is setting a new bar for political communication – away from anecdotal allusions and personal attacks toward evidence, facts and argument.

This can only be good for Canadian democracy.

The challenge for the other Opposition MPs, Liberal, Bloc and NDP, is to meet and exceed his example.

The challenge for the Conservative Government is to respond with transparency – to show Canadians the evidence for their infrastructure program. Here is the Government’s first evidence-based attempt.

Mr. Kennedy is forcing this Government to get away from rhetoric and present Canadians with the evidence.

If medical doctors must use evidence to justify why they have chosen one diagnosis for you instead of another, Canada’s Government must use evidence to justify how its infrastructure stimulus investment is equitable and good for all Canadians – not just those who live in Conservative-held ridings.

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