Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Norman Wells (Nov 18/02) - Alec Simpson couldn't believes his eyes after leafing through the 2001 NWT traffic accident report.

Next to the column indicating the number of licenced drivers -- 684 -- in Norman Wells, where Simpson serves as senior administrative officer, was the 2001 population census for the community. At 666, it would mean there are 18 more licensed drivers in the community than there are people, according to the report.

"Can you make any sense of that?" Simpson puzzled after bringing the report to the attention of News/North.

That's not all, the report is filled with several other numerical improbabilities.

The list reads that while there are 3,121 drivers in Hay River there only another 759 people in the community who do not have driver's licences.

The count is just as bizarre in Yellowknife where, out of a population of 16,723, 15,086 of them have driver's licences.

It would mean there were less than 2,000 people under the age of 16 in Yellowknife, and everyone else drives.

"I'm sure there's some way of statistically adjusting it and correcting it for the deviation of the ontological proof of the existence of God or the geographical pull of the moon," was all Yellowknife Mayor Gord Van Tighem could say when presented with the numbers.

The North Slave's superintendent of transportation, Daniel Auger, said there is an explanation behind the incongruous count.

The population numbers inserted into the report were based on numbers provided by Statistic Canada last year.

Their census numbers caused an uproar in the territory after they showed a population drop of 2,000 from the last time the census was taken in 1996.

The federal government uses the census to determine formula funding for provinces and territories, and the GNWT felt it was being short-changed as a result.

Auger agreed the numbers don't jive in the traffic accident report, but the census numbers are "official."

"You have to use official data or the data that was official at the time when this was prepared," said Auger.

He added that the population numbers were only meant to put things in perspective when comparing the numbers of traffic accidents between communities, and therefore, didn't need to be 100 per cent accurate.

Nonetheless, Simpson isn't impressed -- at least as far as Statistics Canada is concerned.

"It's incompetency," said Simpson. "Statistics Canada better correct their numbers, because it doesn't make sense to have a census that has less population than those that are registered drivers in a community."

Statistics Canada could not be reached for comment before press time.