Monday, January 10, 2011

How Can we Save the Census With no Senate?

The Toronto Star has learned from an access to information request, that the Conservatives scrapped the long-form census on the basis of only a handful of complaints.

The Conservative government listened to only a relative handful of Canadians — including conspiracy theorists afraid the government was going to round them up — before scrapping the mandatory long-form census, according to documents obtained by the Toronto Star.

Canadians were unhappy with so-called intrusive questions, the aggravation of filling it out and even a few were convinced the census was part of a government plot, according to Statistics Canada documents obtained under Access to Information.

But there is virtually no overwhelming evidence in the
Statistics Canada documents to support the government’s contention of widespread privacy concerns — the very argument it used this summer to kill the mandatory long-form census.

I was optimistic when I read that a Liberal bill to save it had passed second reading. But then I remembered that the neocons now control the senate so they'll just rubber stamp it "denied" without debate.

And this is what passes for democracy in Harperland.

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