Lies, damned lie and canola statistics

Saskatchewan's populist premier Scott Moe has a vastly inflated idea of his, and his province's, importance. 

Speaking about China's imposition of punitive tariffs on Canadian canola oil exports - a counter-measure to Canada's punitive tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles - Moe claims that: "This $43 to $45 billion Canadian canola industry that we have [is] employing just over 200,000 people", and reminds us that a good chunk of Canadian canola, although by no means all, is grown in Saskatchewan.

This would make canola a much more important industry than automobile production, for example, which contributes about $19 billion to Canada's GDP, and directly employs about 118,000 people. Except Moe's figures are wildly (Trump-ly!) off.

Moe's figures for canola come from the Canola Council of Canada, which clearly also has an exaggerated idea of their own self-worth, not to mention something of an axe to grind. Their figure of $43.7 billion (Moe's "to 45 billion" is just poetic license) includes a grossly inflated estimate of canola's indirect benefits to the country, according to the Trillium Network for Advance Manufacturing, an Ontario-based think tank.

They point out that Statistics Canada, the same source that identified the $19.2 figure for vehicle production, has canola's contribution to the economy at about $5 billion, and employment at around 21,000.

Well, that's quite a different story from Mr. Moe's! "Lies, damned lies, and statistics", as Benjamin Disraeli would have it? Or "I can prove anything by statistics except the truth", as another British Prime Minister, George Canning, asserted?