PEI's Indentity Crisis as the Disappointing Child

Oh, PEI. I ragged on you pretty hard when I first moved back to Canada four years ago. (Yikes - time flies. That was supposed to be for only two months.) But I eventually grew to like you again. It took awhile, but summers, some time apart, cheap ice cream, and improved flight schedules from the Charlottetown Airport helped re-cement our bond.

I was about to go to bed, thinking, "Wow, nothing on the internet is interesting me right now. Will I be a grown up and fall asleep before 1:15am?" Then something caught my eye on CBC PEI: PEI students score low in international tests. Poor PEI. Are we the disappointing, underachiever child?

PEI gets sucker punched. We don't ever seem to claw our way to top of any positive list, other than population density. (Yay. Break out your pompoms!) We have the highest PST rate (or GST + PST when compared to HST) of all provinces and territories - though Nova Scotia has almost caught up. Only PEI and Quebec has the quirky practice of taxing GST with PST. Taxing tax! Robin Hood - help us!

But that's not the point of this. Sometimes I wonder how PEI and its residents would be if we didn't hear about how terrible we are so frequently. It starts to dull your reaction. We have the highest unemployment rate again? Shrug. You kind of just don't expect things to improve. So, perhaps, we don't try? Our children doing poorly in math again? Well, we've always been bad at math. We expect it thus accept it as the norm.

I think we need a kick in the pants.

I was researching a few things for writing this (I originally started almost a week ago and never finished) as I originally wanted to support my now bland thesis with some fantastic facts. Sadly, I slightly lost my mojo for writing this as my monkey brain has hopped onto other bananas. However, I invite you to look at these charts by Manitoba Hydro depicting electricity bills across Canada. We have the highest bills (with one exception of high usage rates in Englehart, Ontario)! Yaaaaay! However, I am very pleased to report that obesity rates for Islanders are on par with the National average. For men. Women don't fare so well: 30% compared to 23%. Whoops. Any hypothesis on why our men are average but not our women are welcomed. Feel free to reference the delicious amount of cheese I ate this evening within your statement.

That's all. I need to go to bed.