The Economist January 15th 2022 The Americas 29I
ce hockeymattersinCanada.Itisthe
official winter sport and national
pastime. Canada has won more Olympic
medals for it than any other country.
Fully half of Canadians tuned in to watch
their team win gold in the men’s ice
hockey final at the winter Olympics in
Vancouver in 2010, making it the most
watched broadcast television pro
gramme in the country’s history.
But the chances that a Canadian team
will win at the games in Beijing, which
start on February 4th, are looking dismal.
Similarly the United States, the sport’s
other powerhouse, looks unlikely to win
gold, despite the two countries hosting
the National Hockey League (nhl) in
which 32 teams of the world’s best play
ers do battle every week. This year the
league bosses have forbidden players
from competing in China.
The nhlblames the disruption
wrought by covid19. Indeed, the pan
demic has meant that the league has
postponed more than 100 games this
season, which started in October. Before
Christmas more than 15% of players (or
119 people) were out for the count be
cause of the virus.
Some fans cry foul, however. The
league also pulled out in 2018, after a
dispute with the International Olympic
Committee (ioc) over who should pay for
players’ travel, accommodation and
insurance. The nhlloses money from
lending out its players, so it has few
incentives to do so. It also cannot use
footage from the games for its ads.
In 2020 players negotiated to go to theOlympicsaspartoftheircollective
bargaining agreement with the league.
But even before the Omicron variant, few
thought the nhlwould stick to its word.
“I think they would have looked high and
low for an excuse to not send them,” says
Ryan Lambert, a hockey writer.
Canada and the United States now
have just a few weeks to scrape together
teams from junior leagues and college
players. Russia’s men, who won the gold
medal in 2018, are almost certain to do so
again (though under the Olympic flag,
rather than their own, because of a dop
ing ban). China’s team, which qualified
for the first time this year and faced
potential humiliation at the skates of
Canada and the United States, may be
spared some blushes.
The league is betting that fans care
more about their homecity teams. Past
Olympic glories have not translated into
ratings bumps for the nhl. Its decision
to miss the previous games did little to
hurt the league’s popularity in North
America, according to Cliff Grevler of the
Boston Consulting Group. Gary Bettman,
the nhl’s commissioner, has suggested
that ice hockey be moved to the summer
games, during the league’s offseason,
but theioc put his idea on ice.
The nhl may feel it is tapping into a
larger feeling in Canada. The Canadian
government has been one of the loudest
proponents of the diplomatic boycott of
the Olympics. The most recent Pew glo
bal attitudes survey, from 2020, showed
73% of Canadians had a frosty view of
China, a historic high. IcehockeyA puck in the teeth
Canada’s best ice-hockey players cannot go to the OlympicsThe icemen stayethAmazon “a lie” and fired the head of the
National Institute for Space Research (in-
pe), the agency that monitors it. More re
cently the negative attitude to number
crunching has intensified. Late last year
the government held back data showing
record treeclearing until after the uncli
mate talks in Glasgow. On January 6th the
government announced that inpewill no
longer monitor deforestation in a savan
nah in central Brazil that is under threat.
Some problems predate Mr Bolsonaro.
A recession between 2014 and 2016
strained budgets. In 2018 officials from the
statistics agency warned that cash short
ages would affect the census planned for
2020. It was postponed twice. It will at last
go ahead this year, but with fewer ques
tions. Wonks are few and far between: ac
cording to a study in 2020 only a small pro
portion of civil servants always use scien
tific evidence to guide policy decisions.
Previous governments were sometimes
keen on data. In 2004 Brazil launched an
online database of official statistics. Under
a law passed in 2011, anyone can request
such numbers and (supposedly) hear back
within 30 days. The government now flatly
rejects a third of requests, the shabbiest
performance of any administration since
the law came into effect.
Covid19 has made things worse. Over
the past two years the government has
twice tried to change the methodology for
disclosing data, at one point by emphasis
ing the number of “recovered” patients
rather than cases or deaths. After a public
outcry, that decision was reversed.
Other attempts to manipulate data are
being investigated. Last year testimony
during a Senate probe into the govern
ment’s handling of the pandemic accused
some of Mr Bolsonaro’s advisers of in
structing a private healthcare provider to
alter death certificates so as not to register
covidrelated ones as such. They deny it. A
statelevel probe continues.
In a Facebook Live event last year the
president cited a report, supposedly by the
federal oversight agency, that falsely stated
that 50% of covid19 deaths in Brazil in
2020 were due to other causes. The agency
denied the existence of the report. An in
ternal investigation found that a draft was
produced by a staff member who said it
was edited without his consent.
Mr Bolsonaro has clearly learned the
trick, popular with certain other world
leaders, of claiming that any facts he
doesn’t like are “fake news”. But his dis
regard for data will have repercussions, not
least by depriving Brazil’s government of
an accurate view of reality. And there is one
statistic the president cannot fudge. Since
the pandemic has worn on, killing around
700,000, and hiscashhandouts have end
ed, his averageapproval rating has fallen
from 37% to 23%.n