IN 2008, after decades advising national statistical agencies to count only legal market activity in their annual reports, international accountancy mavens at the United Nations Statistics Division — the global trendsetters who tell countries how to do their books — decided that the wages of sin ought to be included too.
That spawned a frenzy of number-crunching. By 2014, novel line items appeared in the accounts of most European Union countries, estimating the economic value of prostitution and illegal drugs. (It’s a work in progress. For example, in 2016, the UK clarified its books to reflect the fact that sex workers tend to conduct business forty weeks a year rather than fifty-two.) The United States, famously prim when it comes to certain kinds of sinning, does not count illegal activity in its national books. Nor does it count cannabis despite the fact that the substance is now legal in a raft of states.
Canada, too, excludes sex work and illegal drug activity from its spreadsheets. But, when Ottawa announced that it would be legalizing recreational cannabis in 2018 (the medicinal stuff had been legit since 2001), the country found itself needing to figure out just how much our basement toking was contributing to the national economy. So Statistics Canada, our most staid government agency, embarked on a nimble-footed, yearslong quest to do the math of pot, complete with its own original taxonomy and an astonishingly tender amount of detail — a fervour that has gained plaudits from some of the UN’s select club of national accountants.
Our groundbreaking methodology — which includes sifting through wastewater and poking through memories of pot prices paid sixty years ago — was the subject of a packed session at the international accountancy community’s biannual meeting in Copenhagen in 2018 and is seen as a potential model for other countries.
Esta historia es de la edición July/August 2021 de The Walrus.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición July/August 2021 de The Walrus.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Dream Machines - The real threat with artificial intelligence is that we'll fall prey to its hype
Some of the world's largest companies, including Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet, are throwing their full weight behind AI. On top of the billions spent by big tech, funding for AI startups hit nearly $50 billion (US) in 2023.
MY GUILTY PLEASURE
MY CHILDREN are grown, with their own partners, their own lives.
The Quest to Decode Vermeer's True Colours
New techniques reveal hidden details in the Dutch master’s paintings
Repeat after Me
TikTok and Instagram are helping to bring Indigenous languages back from the brink
Smokehouse
I WAS STANDING THERE at the corner, the corner where the smaller street intersects with the slightly wider one.
How Could They Just Lose Him?
The Huronia Regional Centre was supposed to be a safe home for people with disabilities. Then, amid suspicions of abuse at the facility, twenty-one-year-old Robin Windross vanished without a trace
Prairie Radical
How conspiracy theorists splintered a small town
Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe
Scott Moe rose quietly through the ranks. Now the Saskatchewan premier and his party are shaping policies with national consequences
The Accommodation Problem
Extensions. Extra exam time. Online everything. Addressing the complex needs of students is creating chaos on campus
MY GUILTY PLEASURE
I WAS AS SURPRISED as anyone when I became obsessed with comics again last year, at the advanced age of forty-five. As a kid, I loved reading G.I. Joe and The Amazing Spider-Man.