Why a forgotten TV station is a potential pot of gold

Ask many Winnipeggers which TV stations are associated with the phrases “Channel 6, Cable 2”, “Channel 7, Cable 5” and “Channel 9, Cable 12”, and they will know the correct answers: CBC, CKY-CTV and CKND-Global, respectively.

Some might even know that “Channel 13, Cable 8” is Citytv and that “Channel 3, Cable 10” is Radio-Canada, the French-language public network.

But ask Winnipeggers about “Channel 35, Cable 11”, and you’re likely to see a blank expression come across their faces.

From the arrival of the CBC’s Winnipeg station, CBWT, in 1954 to the launch of what was then known as 13 MTN in 1986, the debut of a new local TV station was always a big deal.

By contrast, the launch of Omni 11 on Feb. 6, 2006 — officially, CIIT channel 35, cable 11 — went almost unnoticed. The station, which offered a mix of religious and secular programming, had no local celebrities, weak public awareness, and not even a known studio location.

Subsequent rebrandings as CIIT 11, Joytv and finally as Hope TV — currently a (tedious) mix of religious and foreign-language programming — couldn’t get the station out of the ratings basement. In fact, the latest rebranding was a bit of a disaster. As Joytv, the station reached 70,000 viewers for a total of 84,000 viewer-hours per week in Fall 2012. In Fall 2014, as Hope TV, it was only reaching 20,000 viewers for a total of 42,000 viewer-hours each week.

As for its competitors in Fall 2014:

• CKY-CTV reached slightly more than 1 million viewers each week, for a total of more than 3.2 million viewer-hours;
• CKND-Global reached 596,000 viewers weekly, for a total of about 1.8 million viewer-hours;
• CBWT-CBC reached 735,000 viewers weekly, but for 1.7 million viewer-hours;
• CHMI-Citytv reached 372,000 viewers weekly, for a total of 729,000 viewer-hours;
• CBWFT-Radio-Canada, which broadcasts only in French, reached 121,000 viewers weekly, for a total of 214,000 viewer hours — five times CIIT-HopeTV’s total viewer-hours!

With numbers like that, you wonder why ZoomerMedia, Hope TV’s owner, bothers to keep the station on the air.

Believe it or not, the station that even gets thumped by the local French channel in the ratings is a potential pot of gold for its owners: not for its small audience, but for the frequencies that its channel 35 over-the-air signal occupies.

When the first North American television stations went on the air in the late ’40s, only a mere 72 MHz of bandwidth was available, divided among 12 channels, each 6 MHz wide, between 54 and 88 MHz and between 174 and 216 MHz.

Since stations sharing the same channel had to be kept about 300 kilometres apart to minimize interference, and most neighbouring-channel stations had to be kept about 100 kilometres apart, it was soon clear that just 12 channels wouldn’t be enough to satisfy North America’s needs. So, starting from the early ’50s, 70 new UHF channels between 470 and 890 MHz — channels 14 to 83 — were made available to broadcasters.

This was perhaps a little much, so in 1983, the relatively few TV stations between channels 70 and 83 were required to relocate to lower channels or to go off the air so that those frequencies could be used by a new technology: cellular telephones.

The next big technological change came some 20 years later, as TV stations began to migrate from analog to digital broadcasting. With demand rising for additional bandwidth for wireless data services, and digital broadcasting making it possible for two or more broadcasts to share the same 6 MHz TV channel, channels 52 to 69 were the next TV frequencies to be reassigned.

Yet the remaining UHF channels, 14 to 51, were still seen as a wasteful use of bandwidth that could be put to better use by wireless data services. So, the U.S. is preparing to hold an auction that could reassign channels 31 to 51 to other uses, with TV stations currently operating on those frequencies being given the option to either move to a lower channel, if one can be found, or to be bought out and go off the air permanently.

Canada is expected to do the same in the near future.

The frequencies those stations operate on are so valuable that, by one conservative estimate, a 6 MHz-wide channel covering a population of 800,000 could be worth $4.8 million to $9.6 million U.S. just for the rights alone.

That might sound like pocket change by TV business standards, but it might be easier to take the money and run than to move to a new channel — a move that would require stations to spend large sums of money on engineering studies and on installing new or additional transmitters and antennas.

Especially when local TV stations are struggling to make any money. A financial summary published by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) earlier this year showed that conventional television stations last made a pre-tax profit in 2011, with collective losses exceeding $226 million in 2015.

Three Winnipeg TV stations operate within the 20 channels* being eyed for an eventual Canadian bandwidth auction: Hope TV on channel 35, Global on channel 40 and Radio-Canada on channel 51.

Global does well enough in the market, even assuming that it’s a loss-leader for owner Corus Media, that it might consider moving to a lower channel. The station had originally been expected to remain on its historical channel 9 frequency after the 2011 analog-to-digital transition, using channel 28 only temporarily; but instead requested channel 40, perhaps realizing the higher frequency might have greater future value.

Radio-Canada, on channel 51, could easily share channel 27 with CBC Winnipeg without losing its high-definition picture, allowing the higher channel to be sold off for data use if CBC-Radio-Canada so chooses.

But Hope TV, the little-watched TV station with no local studio and no local personalities? The station that is little more than a rebroadcast of an obscure religious cable network — the ultimate waste of bandwidth, and a sin for which a Toronto TV station was stripped of its licence? The station that gives us the oddity of the Van Impes? It might just be worth their while to take the money and run if and when they get the chance.

* – Excluding channel 37, which is not used for broadcasting in the U.S. or Canada. This small gap in the UHF band is used for scientific purposes.

 

Who’s more likely to visit Canada in the summertime?

It’s early August, and that means that Canada’s tourism industry is in full swing, with not just many Canadians being on holiday, but many foreign visitors arriving as well. The single largest source of foreign visitors might not surprise you: in July and August 2015, 3,954,528 American visitors entered Canada by car, aircraft, train or ship according to Statistics Canada, more than 10 times the number of British (218,438), French (159,063), Chinese (158,496) or Australian high-season visitors (79,206).

But it might be surprising to learn that, on a per capita basis, the United States ranks fifth in terms of its citizens’ propensity to visit Canada during the summer high season, with 12.4 visitors to Canada per 1,000 U.S. residents. Residents of the French territory of St. Pierre and Miquelon, just off the coast of Newfoundland, made 672.9 visits to Canada per 1,000 residents, a not-so-surprising figure given the territory’s isolation. The other three among the top five were current or former British colonies linked to Canada by proximity and migration: Bermuda (73.1 visits per 1,000 residents), the Cayman Islands (32.7) and the Barbados (13.2).

Foreigners entering Canada in July and August 2015, per 1,000 home country residents. Top 25 countries on a per-capita basis; countries with fewer than 1,000 visitors to Canada excluded. Visitor information source: Statistics Canada CANSIM tables 427-0003 (non-U.S.), 427-0004 (U.S.) (Click to enlarge)

Of the long-haul markets, Hong Kong residents and the Swiss (5.6 and 5.3, respectively) showed the strongest interest in visiting Canada in the summer of 2015. Hong Kong residents were most likely motivated by personal ties to Canada, given that the severely undervalued Hong Kong dollar would make Canada seem unusually expensive (while making Hong Kong better value for Canadians heading over there). For the Swiss, however, the drastically overvalued Swiss Franc makes the rest of the world a bargain, Canada included.

If distance, exchange rates and migration patterns all shape foreigners’ willingness to visit Canada, so too it seems does language. Making more than three visits per 1,000 residents, the New Zealanders, British, Australians and Irish show a greater propensity to visit Canada than do residents of, say, most European countries — even the economically healthy Nordic ones — with the exception of the Icelanders, the well-off Luxembourgeois and the aforementioned Swiss.

The Jimmy John’s case: When doing what’s best for the organization means doing what’s worse for the economy

Usually, when you hear about staff being required to sign non-compete agreements as a condition of employment, it’s easy to assume that this only applies to the big-shots: executives, senior managers, people with intimate knowledge of corporate strategy, and so on, and surely not to a 19-year-old restaurant server or even a 24-year-old shift supervisor at a suburban fast-food outlet.

Think again. In a country where so many feel that “the little guy” is condemned to always end up with the short end of the stick that many have turned to Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders as would-be saviours, a news story appeared this past week that might just reaffirm their suspicions.

Illinois attorney-general Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit mid-week against Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches, a Champaign, Ill.-based sandwich shop franchise, for requiring its employees until just last year to sign non-compete agreements. These agreements forbade employees from seeking employment with any other restaurant “that does at least ten percent of its business making sandwiches” within a two- or three-mile radius of any Jimmy John’s restaurant nationwide.

Under the agreement, the ban on working for even marginal competitors remained in effect for two years after leaving Jimmy John’s.

The non-compete agreement was almost certainly designed as a bluff to discourage staff turnover, not with the intent of actually enforcing it. Enforcement would have required:

a.) Keeping track of former employees’ whereabouts, or somehow finding out that the former employee had landed a job at Subway a mile and a half away, 15 months later (possible, but unlikely);

b.) Giving enough of a damn about the alleged breach to actually attempt to hold the former employee to the terms of the non-compete agreement (extremely unlikely for a low-wage job, and unlikely even in some better-compensated, mid-level jobs, if the path of least resistance was to just ignore the whole matter), and;

c.) If all else failed, convincing a court to enforce the agreement even though the courts have a history of overturning such agreements in all but the most serious of disputes.

Even Jimmy John’s conceded in a written statement that holding restaurant workers to non-compete agreements was a bit absurd:

“We made clear to the Attorney General that we would never enforce a non-compete agreement against any hourly employee that might have signed one. We offered to have our CEO sign a declaration to that effect, and pointed the Attorney General to an April 2015 ruling dismissing a federal claim against Jimmy John’s over the use of non-compete agreements, on the grounds that those agreements were not at risk of being enforced.”

Non-compete agreements are nevertheless popular. While the percentage of Canadian workers covered by non-compete agreements is not readily at hand, a White House analysis released just a month ago found that 18 percent of American workers are subject to restrictions on finding work elsewhere, including 14 percent of those earning less than $40,000 annually.

They even have their defenders. “Something strange is happening in the Beehive State,” law professor Nathan Oman wrote in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News this past March, as legislators were passing a new law banning non-compete agreements — a law Oman described as “a solution in search of a problem” and “a classic example of the legislative process run amok.” In defence of non-compete agreements, Oman wrote:

“In non­compete agreements, employees commit not to work for their former employers’ competitors if the employment relationship ends. This encourages employers to invest in their employees and share proprietary information. Everyone benefits, which is why employees and employers agree to the contracts in the first place.”

“In theory, such contracts could harm workers and consumers by giving monopoly power to employers. We solved this problem, however, more than a century ago. Like every other state, Utah law already requires that such contracts have reasonable limits on their geographic scope and duration. Indeed, any business that used them to monopolize a market would commit a crime under federal antitrust laws that have been in place since 1890.”

Others see non-compete agreements as being harmful to the overall economy even if they are beneficial for individual businesses by protecting secrets and calming competition.

On Twitter, I called the idea of requiring restaurant workers to sign non-compete agreements “asinine”. Martin’s response (in jest, I hope!) made my day.
If you don’t already do so, follow me on Twitter at @kevinmcdougald

A 2010 research paper by three academics from the MIT Sloan School of Management, the INSEAD global business school and the Harvard Business School found that non-compete agreements were economically harmful by encouraging former employees to move away in search of work and thus “stripping enforcing regions of some of their most valuable knowledge workers while retaining those of lesser value.”

“To the extent that one can draw normative conclusions from the above findings, policymakers who sanction the use of non-competes could be inadvertently creating a potential regional disadvantage. From a regional policymaker‘s perspective, the free flow of particularly high-ability talent to the best opportunities seems beneficial as long as it occurs locally . . . whereas such talented workers who take out-of-state jobs are a loss to the region. Regions that choose to enforce employee non-compete agreements may therefore be subjecting themselves to a domestic brain drain not unlike that described in the literature on international emigration out of less developed countries.”

[…]

“…[E]nforcement of non-compete agreements might act as a brake on labor pooling in two ways. First, regions that allow firms to enforce non-compete clauses against ex-employees drive some of their most highly valued skilled workers out of the region, decreasing the local supply of talent. Second, the interorganizational mobility of those workers who remain in the region is lower when non-competes are enforced. Given the role of labor pooling as a microfoundation of agglomeration, we should therefore expect more clustering in regions such as Silicon Valley where non-competes are unenforceable.”

This was supported more recently by a U.S. Department of the Treasury report which found that, while non-compete agreements can protect trade secrets and thus encourage innovation, reward employers for spending more on employee training and reduce staff turnover, they can also lead to lower wages, cause people to leave the careers in which they are most productive, and slow productivity growth.

The Treasury report recommended, among other things, that employers be dissuaded from requiring non-compete agreements unless there is a high probability that they could and would be enforced (i.e., not frivolously or as a bluff, as in the Jimmy John’s case) and requiring that employees continue to be paid at partial salary by their former employers in exchange for agreeing not to seek employment with competing organizations.

The Jimmy John’s case, and the evidence above, suggests that it might be a good use of legislators’ time in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere to limit the use of non-compete agreements. While those in the business and legal communities might see such agreements as useful from their point of view, it’s a benefit that comes at a cost to the wider community. It’s also an example that there’s a gap between what’s good for business (or labour, which has made its own case for competition-limiting measures at times) and what’s good for the economy. The two are not always the same, or even compatible.

Why 100% foreign ownership of the major airlines is on hold (even if it’s a good idea)

It costs a lot of money to be in the airline business. In 2015, it cost Air Canada more than $12.3 billion (or $236 per seat-trip) to keep the airline flying. The smaller WestJet cost a little over $3.4 billion to run, or approximately $213 per seat-trip. Even if half the passengers vanished overnight, most of those multi-billion-dollar costs would still need to be paid as overhead.

When fleets need to be renewed or IT systems need to be modernized, it can be helpful if the airline can turn to investors. But Canada’s major airlines are limited in who they can turn to by something that might seem rather petty in this day and age: where those investors live.

That’s because Canadian law requires that “at least 75 percent of the voting interests, meaning voting securities and the votes assigned to those securities, need to be both owned and controlled by Canadians.” In other words, foreigners are collectively limited to a 25-percent stake.

For years, this cap on foreign ownership has been seen as being of dubious value. Both Australia and New Zealand have allowed up to 49 percent foreign ownership of their international airlines, and 100 percent foreign ownership of strictly domestic airlines, since at least 2002 with no adverse effects. A working paper presented at the International Civil Aviation Organization’s 2013 Montreal conference painted the industry as being still subject to “a framework of restrictions developed in the first half of the 20th century at the end of an age of colonial empires” that are “no longer fit for purpose.” And an International Air Transport Association (IATA) report noted in 2007 that “removing ownership restrictions can also lead to increased investment in the sector . . . and a lower cost of capital as firms have access to wider and more efficient sources of finance.”

At last, momentum is building in Canada to allow foreigners a little more freedom to invest in Canadian airlines. A review of the Canada Transportation Act that concluded this past February recommended allowing up to 49 percent foreign ownership of Canada’s passenger airlines and complete foreign ownership of its cargo airlines.

The idea was met with mixed views in the industry. WestJet is said to favour raising the foreign ownership limit to 49 percent only for countries that allow Canadian investors the same privileges. Porter and Jetlines were said to be all for it, while Air Canada carefully maintained a poker face.

But why stop at 49 percent? Why not raise the passenger airline foreign ownership limit to 100 percent?

A big part of the problem can be found in those restrictions that limit international air traffic. When they fly between countries, airlines need to abide by rules set out by international treaties negotiated between Canada and foreign governments.

Most of those treaties, some of which are decades old, would bar any majority-foreign-owned Canadian airlines from serving foreign cities. For instance:

• Canada’s agreement with Mexico says that either country has the right “to revoke, suspend or impose conditions” on an airline’s right to fly between the two countries if “they are not satisfied that substantial ownership and effective control of the airline are vested in [the country’s government] or its nationals.”
• Canada’s agreement with the European Union says that a Canadian airline can only serve the E.U. if “effective control of the airline are vested in nationals of Canada, the airline is licensed as a Canadian airline, and the airline has its principal place of business in Canada.” Similar restrictions apply to E.U. airlines flying to Canada.
• And Canada’s agreement with China allows China to block any seemingly Canadian airline if “they are not satisfied that substantial ownership and effective control of the airline” rests with Canadian citizens. Again, Canada can apply the same requirement to China’s airlines

It is possible that the basis for those restrictions will eventually be worked around. As the IATA’s 2007 report noted, international safety standards were already taking shape when the report was being written (including an operational safety audit that was to be mandatory for all IATA member-airlines starting in 2008) that would prevent airlines from adopting the flags-of-convenience often used in the cruise ship industry; thus, safety standards are no longer a particularly compelling reason to block foreign ownership among the countries whose airlines already have excellent safety records.

And while there were approximately 3,000 international agreements regulating air travel in 2007, only 200 of them already covered 75 percent of passenger traffic, greatly simplifying the process of revising those treaties to allow full foreign ownership between countries with similarly high standards.

There’s no longer any need to fear American or German or Australian or Japanese or British ownership of Canadian airlines. Indeed, the easier it is for Canadian carriers to get investment from abroad, the more robust the Canadian system will be. Until 100-percent foreign ownership can be allowed without running afoul of decades-old international treaties, raising the foreign ownership limit from 25 percent to 49 percent would be a fine start.

 

Demographic shift putting dream of lower taxes, balanced budgets and no cuts out of reach

By all indications, Manitoba’s provincial election on Tuesday is going to result in the election of the first Progressive Conservative government since 1999, with Brian Pallister being sworn in in late April or early May as Premier of Manitoba. As Pallister and his cabinet settle in to office, they will go through a ritual that all new governments go through: briefings by department staff who will explain the cold, hard realities that they will have to deal with as the excitement of winning an election wears off.

One of those cold, hard realities to be anticipated will be an update on how changing demographics will affect the province’s finances. The heavy influx of immigrants into Manitoba in recent years paints a picture of a young province; but the population data tells a different story.

Statistics Canada periodically updates its population projections for each Canadian province and territory, and its projections of population by age are sobering.

Over time, the balance between working-age Manitobans aged 15-64 and retirement-age Manitobans aged 65-plus has been shifting. Forty years ago, in 1976, there were 6.1 working-age Manitobans for every retirement-aged Manitoban.

Thirty years ago, in 1986, it was 5.3. Twenty years ago, in 1996, it was 4.8; rising slightly to 4.9 in 2006.

But despite the arrival of younger immigrants by the thousands, that ratio has resumed its decline over the past 10 years.

Currently, there are about 4.4 working-age Manitobans for each retirement-age Manitoban. And according to Statistics Canada’s M1 –medium-growth, 1991/1992 to 2010/2011 population trends, in just 10 years time, there will be one less person on the working-age side of the balance than there is today — or 3.4 to 1.

The change is expected to continue in this direction into the mid-2030s, when there will be three working-age Manitobans for every retirement-age Manitoban.

Number of working age Manitobans per retirement-age Manitoban by year. Based on Statistics Canada’s Projected population, by projection scenario, age and sex, as of July 1 — M1 medium-growth, 1991/1992 to 2010/2011 scenario.

Why does this matter? As people retire, their spending changes. If you’re a working-age person, think of what you spend your money on today: transportation to and from work, food, clothing, shelter and income taxes.

Now think about how that would change if you were a retiree. You wouldn’t need to drive around so much (or buy a car or fill it up with gas as often). You would likely eat out less; you wouldn’t need neckties or dress shirts anymore except for special occasions; you may very well never be in the market to purchase a home ever again.

All of which means you’ll be paying less in sales taxes, even if the rates stays the same, and less in other government fees and taxes. That includes income tax, since you’ll be earning less. (As you can see below, the average Canadian household in which the designated “reference person” was aged 55-64 years in 2014 paid $18,220 in income tax. But when the “reference person” was aged 65 or older, average income tax payments dropped by more than half to $7,851.)

Average annual spending by Canadian households, by age of designated “reference person”, Canada 2014

The number of households in Manitoba (and throughout much of Canada) in which that “reference person” is one of those lower-spending 65-plus retirees is going to continue growing much faster than the number of younger, higher-spending households.

That’s going to put a bit of a squeeze on government finances, and on the businesses that sell those things on which spending drops the most in retirement: department and business-wear stores, restaurants, auto dealers, gas stations, realtors and so on.

Among the few areas where spending is higher among 65-plus households than it is among the 55-64s: direct health care costs, by $211 per year at the national level.

With that, the governments of the next 20 years will need to deal with a world where satisfying the dream of a balanced budget every year, no tax increases and no controversial cuts is an increasingly difficult task.

Palmerston, Larry and the Acoustic Kitty

A new hire started work this week at Britain’s foreign ministry — and his lunch break lasts all day long.

Palmerston, a black-and-white shorthair cat, is the new Chief Mouser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s headquarters on London’s King Charles Street, kitty-corner (pardon the pun) to Parliament and just around the corner from the prime minister’s offices at 10 Downing Street.

Like his counterpart Larry, the brown and white tabby inhabiting 10 Downing Street, Palmerston’s duty will be to help the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) deal with its persistent rodent problem. To welcome Palmerston to the team, the FCO issued a tongue-in-cheek news release, quoted in The Telegraph:

Palmerston is HM Diplomatic Service’s newest arrival and in the role of FCO Chief Mouser will assist our pest controllers in keeping down the number of mice in our King Charles Street building.

Palmerston’s domestic posting will have zero cost to the public purrse as a staff kitty will be used to pay for him and all aspects of his welfur.

But has anyone thought to check Palmerston — or Larry — for any smuggled goods? To make sure he isn’t a secret agent for the Americans, the Russians, the Israelis or the Chinese?

Believe it or not, there actually was once an attempt to use a cat to commit international espionage.

In the mid-Sixties, the ever-imaginative CIA explored the possibility of enlisting a cat, with a microphone and transmitting antenna implanted in its body, to eavesdrop on conversations. It became known as the Acoustic Kitty Project.

But, as former CIA officer Victor Marchetti told The Telegraph in 2001, after the Acoustic Kitty documents were finally declassified, the idea of using a cat to perform espionage quickly ran into problems.

“They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that.”

But finally, the CIA had the Acoustic Kitty ready for his (or her?) first public test. According to Emily Anthes in her 2013 book Frankenstein’s Cat, “CIA staffers drove Acoustic Kitty to the park and tasked it with capturing the conversation of two men sitting on a bench.”

Cats tend to have a mind of their own, however. Instead of making his way to the park bench, Anthes wrote, “the cat wandered into the street, where it was promptly squashed by a taxi.”

“There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead,” Marchetti recalled decades later to The Telegraph.

Estimates of the cost of the Acoustic Kitty project range from $10 million to $20 million.

Despite the cat-astrophic flop, one of the released (but still partially censored) documents praises the researchers who worked on it.

“The work done on this problem over the years reflects a great credit on the personnel who guided it . . . [and their] energy and imagination could be models for scientific pioneers.”

But, “our final examination of trained cats for [censored] use in the [censored] convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs.”

 

* — See also the World War II Bat Bombs experiment, which tested the possibility of releasing bats over Japan with tiny bombs strapped to their bodies, and having them fly into the country’s many wooden structures to start fires. The tests took a disastrous turn when some of the bats were accidentally released, setting both a hangar and a general’s car on fire.

April 19 election likely to end NDP’s long run in office

On April 19, Manitobans will go to the polls to elect 57 members of the provincial Legislative Assembly. That election will either turn the governing NDP into an opposition party in the Legislature for the first time since 1999, or, in the unlikely event that it is re-elected, into a statistical oddball.

Governments go through a life cycle. They start off fresh and new, even exciting sometimes. But, the longer they live, the more battle-weary they become. Sometimes a periodic shake-up and the introduction of new faces prolongs their lives, as it did for the long-running Alberta Progressive Conservatives who governed that province continuously from 1971 to 2015.

More often, however, governments find themselves running into natural limits on how long they can govern before the public tires of them.

Where are those limits? To figure that out, I looked at the life span of 41 Canadian provincial governments entering office after Jan. 1, 1960, and which left office prior to Jan. 1, 2016. By “government”, I mean a continuous period of party-rule. Thus, the current NDP government in Manitoba would count as a single government, even though it has been led by two premiers: Gary Doer (1999-2009) and Greg Selinger (2009-present).

The average lifespan of a provincial government during that time was 9.8 years, dropping to 8.9 years if one excludes Alberta’s 43.7-year Progressive Conservative government as an anomaly. This suggests that a government enters a vulnerable period as it approaches a decade in power, a time when voters might be looking around for something fresh.

This is further supported by looking at the “middle 50%” of governments, by filtering out the shortest- and longest-lasting 25 percent on either side of the continuum. Continuing to exclude the Alberta PC Anomaly, only one-in-four governments lasted less than 6.1 years, while only another one-in-four lasted longer than 11 years. This points to the difficulty (though not impossibility) of knocking off a first-term government, and the rapidly declining odds of survival after a decade in office.

Now let’s look at the extremes.

With the Alberta PC Anomaly still excluded, the bottom five percent of governments lasted up to 3.9 years before being thrown out. This includes Pauline Marois’s ill-fated 2012-14 Parti Quebecois government in Quebec, and Dave Barrett’s 1972-75 NDP government in B.C. The once-powerful Union Nationale’s 1966-70 Quebec government also finishes just above the cut.

At the opposite extreme, the longest-living five percent of governments lasted 16.1 years in office, these being the Progressive Conservative governments that ran Newfoundland and Labrador from 1972 to 1989 and New Brunswick from 1970 to 1987. The 1991-2007 Saskatchewan NDP government finishes just slightly below the cut. (I’m still excluding the Alberta PC Anomaly, as you can see.)

If making it into the top five percent of government lifespans represents “extreme old age”, the Manitoba NDP government crossed that threshold in about mid-November 2015.

It should be cautioned that elections can produce surprises, and that even improbable events — as a fifth term for the Manitoba NDP government would be — still happen once in a while. But these events are just that: improbable.

If the NDP loses the April 19 election, as they likely will, its old age and the desire to refresh things a bit will have played as much of a role in its downfall as the provincial sales tax increase, the party’s internal discord, and its weakening of internal discipline since 2011; though the public’s feelings about the latter three things will determine how deep a cut it takes in its seat count, and the party’s odds of staging a comeback in four years.

And if it wins and becomes one of the top one percent of governments in terms of longevity? Well, hopefully you will have placed and won a bet, as the government will have beaten the odds in a way that few Canadian governments ever have.