| Oct 03, 2013


The Vital Signs report contains much useful information, and represents a sincere effort to get at the social issues that concern people. It can be used as a tool for developing policies that are directed at some of the struggles that resident face.

It has a number of weaknesses, however. One that was acknowledged in the presentation was that despite every effort, there was a very poor response from those under 25 to the Index of Well Being survey that was the backbone of the report. As Florence Campbell acknowledged in her presentation, the results are a snapshot of the well-being of those residents who are over 25.

From the point of view of the rural residents outside of the City of Kingston, the report is really not about them. On a per capita basis, more rural residents answered the wellness survey than those in the city. For example, 48% of respondents were from Kingston, which has over 60% of the region's population, while 20% of respondents were from Frontenac County, which has less than 15% of the population.

However the report did not only use survey data in its findings. It also included 2011 census data taken entirely from the City of Kingston, and was written with an unmistakeable focus on a Kingston audience. This is not surprising; the sponsors included the Kingston Economic Development Corporation, Downtown Kingston.ca The City of Kingston, and the Kingston Whig Standard.

Because the data the report uses is taken from different sources, each with different geographical boundaries, there is also a question of accuracy. Life in Napanee is different from life in Kingston; ditto for Cloyne and Sydenham, and Loyalist Township is nothing like Burridge, yet all of these places are identical as far as the Vital Signs report is concerned.

All of this is not to condemn the Vital Signs report. It is an ambitious enterprise, to be sure, and worth entering into, but it is a flawed document in several regards.

And to end on an existential note, how can people be trusted to evaluate their own well being, and their own happiness? Ninety-four percent of us say we are satisfied with our quality of life, but what do we know about it? Maybe we just lack imagination. If lab rats could communicate and 94% said they were satisfied with their quality of life, they would still be living in cages.

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