There is nothing new under the sun with the BC Liberal government constructing misleading charts, graphs and visuals to spin “factoids” into something covered in roses, like this piece of fiction from the premier’s TV infomercial Wednesday night.

One of B.C.’s leading experts on tax policy says the charts Premier Gordon Campbell used in his TV address gave such a misleading picture of tax rates in this province that, had they been turned in by his students, he would make them do the assignment over again.

“If a student did this, I would say this is deceptive, maybe intentionally deceptive,” said Jon Kesselman, an economist with Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy.

via Premier’s tax charts misleading, deceptive, experts say.

The BC government sent out a mailing to everyone in the province 7 years ago with equally misleading graphics. I had a wonderful time writing about how fortuitously inaccurate the visuals were.

“If you’re asking, did we deliberately put the baseline at $1,000 and then not put the number on it so we could create a false impression, that was not the intent,” [Hansen] said.

I simply don’t believe that the government’s intent was not to deceive. After all they have been doing it for years, like this graph.