The simmering controversy over the long-form census is boiling over in Parliament again, as MPs prepare to vote on a motion that will put the Harper government on the defensive. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff on Monday highlighted his party's plans to put the spotlight on the issue in an effort to convince the Conservative government to rethink its plans.
"They want to stampede this through and we're saying 'Hold on here. You're in a minority government, you don't have the approval of Parliament, think again, and let's get this right.'" Ignatieff said Statistics Canada is a world-renowned institution and the Harper government is "engaged in a form of vandalism."
And Ralph Goodale insists that it's not too late, despite what the Harperites are suggesting:
Though Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government declared the 2011 census to be voluntary, and the forms have reportedly already gone to the printers, Goodale says that there are any number of ways to reinstate the mandatory census, as so many Canadian organizations are demanding.
“That’s a decision where the government could yet quite easily change its mind,” says Goodale, a former finance minister, who believes that the government is hiding behind the “it’s too late” argument as a way of avoiding debate on its controversial census decision of this summer. This week, the Liberals are pushing forward a vote in the Commons to reinstate the mandatory census, while an organization representing francophones was in Federal Court on Monday morning, seeking a formal injunction on the decision to make the census voluntary
And even Mark Carney, the "de facto chief steward of the Canadian economy" has given his opinion:
And the youngest central banker among the world’s leading economies has joined the more than 350 groups opposing the federal Tories’ proposed scrapping of the mandatory long-form census. Detailed census data influences the Bank’s decision-making in steering the economy.
Will Carney be the subject of new attacks? Ivan Fellegi, Canada's former chief statistician says he might, after suggesting that Without StatsCan's integrity 'we might as well not exist'.
He has been with StatsCan for 51 years, and fears losing his position for speaking out against Harper's decision to scrap the long-form census.
Liberal MP John McCallum announced at a news conference on Thursday that his party will introduce legislation to bring back the mandatory long-form census questionnaire when the House of Commons resumes sitting in the fall.
Mr. McCallum said the decision by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to scrap the mandatory long-form census over privacy issues is a thinly veiled attack on the ability of all levels of government to deliver progressive social programs.
“A voluntary survey will skew the picture of what Canada really looks like as lower income minority Canadians will be less likely to fill it out,” he said. The bill to be introduced by the Liberals will clarify that that 20 per cent of the Canadian population will receive a mandatory long-form questionnaire during the census period - the same percentage of Canadians that received it in previous years. Mr. McCallum said the bill will also remove the controversial threat of jail time for not completing the census.
McCallum believes, as most do, that Stephen Harper is trying to dumb down politics, and it's a shame, because we have so many intelligent people out there who could do wonderful things for this country. And we can start with John McCallum.
From Wikipedia:
He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queens' College, Cambridge University, a diplôme d'études supérieures from Université de Paris and a Doctorate in economics from McGill University. He was a professor of economics at the University of Manitoba from 1976 until 1978, Simon Fraser University from 1978 until 1982, the Université du Québec à Montréal from 1982 until 1987, and McGill University from 1987 until 1994. He is an honorary member of the Royal Military College of Canada, student #S139. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Arts at McGill University. He then became Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist of the Royal Bank of Canada.
He is the author of 1980 book, Unequal Beginnings: Agriculture and Economic Development in Quebec and Ontario until 1870. He is also the co-author (with Clarence Barber) of Unemployment and Inflation: The Canadian Experience and Controlling Inflation: Learning from Experience in Canada, Europe and Japan. He also co-wrote Parting as friends: the economic consequences for Quebec in 1991 and Global Disequilibrium in the World Economy in 1992.
... As McGill University’s Dean of Arts, McCallum secured a $10 million contribution from Charles Bronfman for the establishment of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada
.... McCallum was the Royal Bank of Canada’s chief economist for six years. While consistently achieving the highest media coverage of bank chief economists, he also engaged in social issues, notably a 1997 Royal Bank conference designed to align the business community with the recommendations of the 1996 Report on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The tenth anniversary of his paper at that conference, "The Cost of Doing Nothing," was recently highlighted in Aboriginal Times Magazine
.... McCallum successfully nominated Nelson Mandela as the second honorary citizen in Canadian history. McCallum was quite vocal in Canada's debate on Same-Sex marriage. He told the Edmonton Sun in August 2003, "If people want to do something and it doesn’t hurt other people, doesn’t reduce other people’s rights, we should let them do it. Why not?"
I'm so tired of this constant assault on higher education, like it's a disease. Mr. McCallum is well educated, intelligent and enlightened, and he shouldn't have to apologize for that.
And as he says, Stephen Harper's approach is "a triumph of ignorance over knowledge, a triumph of ideology over science." Harper has never worked a single day as an economist so his degree means nothing, and his science minister, Gary Goodyear, doesn't believe in evolution. How can he be a science minister?
While Stockwell Day is building prisons for imaginary prisoners, Tony Clement is trying to bust out all of those Canadians who have jailed because they refused to fill out the mandatory long form census.
A group of concerned citizens held a concert and raised enough money to ... well actually they raised no money, but they raised a lot of spirits.
And Stephen Harper was so concerned about these poor census felons that he actually held a press conference .... well not exactly a press conference, more of a staged affair but we learned how he felt about some play that he probably won't go to, mainly because he's just so gosh darned worried about all those census felons.
The Globe’s Steve Chase wrote this piece to explain how Stephen Harper, instead of being asked about changes to the census, wound up being asked today about a play that few people will see and even fewer will give a shit about.
But the article is interesting for a different reason. Read it and marvel at what has become of our national press gallery – reduced to milling about in cliques and engaging in whispered debate over how to obediently divvy up the meager allotment of questions they’ve been granted by a Prime Minister too arrogant to expose himself to scrutiny, too fragile to agree to anything so risky as a follow-up query and — someone has to say it — too gray now to use Just For Men without us all totally noticing.
I know I'm quite marvelled at what has become of our press gallery. Maybe they should just stay home and phone in their columns. They're always the same anyway. "Harper refused to answer questions". "RCMP threatened me with a big stick".
But back to those poor census felons. I'm still worried about them, and I don't think that Dr. Sylvia Ostr gets it. These poor people are being threatened.
Canada’s former chief statistician and one of its internationally renowned economists Saturday described as “shocking” and “ridiculous” the federal government’s decision to scrap the mandatory census long form. “I think it’s ridiculous the government would intervene and tell Statistics Canada how to collect its information,” Dr. Sylvia Ostry told the Couchiching Conference on public affairs after being presented with an award for public policy leadership.
The Conservative government’s action, she said, undermined the global stature of Statistics Canada which has been praised consistently as one of the leading statistics agencies in the world. “The whole thing is shocking,” she said.
When Stephen Harper was asked why he was scrapping the census ... oh, yeah. He wasn't asked. But he may be taking in a play.
Stephen Harper outlines above how census information will now be gathered. I like the old way.
Munir Sheikh is scheduled to appear Monday on a panel at the conference where he will explain how government statistics make a difference. He will also be glad-handed by his peers for resigning from government over the decision to make the long-form census voluntary. “You have to admire the head of Statistics Canada for sticking to his principles,” said Mr. Thompson, who retired from public service and now works in the private sector. “It’s emblematic of how serious many people take their responsibility to be independent and objective
That’s because this move, and the government’s obduracy in the face of criticism from just about everyone, is among the dumbest things Harper has done as PM. Already the Tories have slipped measurably in the polls. Pollster Alan Gregg says we mustn’t attribute this to the census fight because most Canadians aren’t really engaged. True, as far as it goes. Many of us were lounging dockside when we began to notice headlines about an obscure controversy involving statistics.Only in summer, we said, and went back to our beach books.
But then the critics started to pile in. They now include every Canadian municipality; a clear majority of provinces, including Ontario and Quebec; current and past senior bureaucrats at Statistics Canada, including the recently resigned deputy minister, Munir Sheikh; the Conference Board of Canada; the Canadian Chamber of Commerce; and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, among many others. So far Harper himself has said nothing. He’s on holiday. So Maxime Bernier, Jim Flaherty and the increasingly woebegone Tony Clement have been left to spin the party line.
Here it is: Canadians shouldn’t be threatened with jail if they don’t complete the form. And, some of its questions are too intrusive. The wrinkle: No one has ever gone to jail for non-completion of the census in the 340 years since it was first taken in 1666, in what was then New France.
When Ontario's Harris government wanted to find out how account holders felt about the idea of privatizing the Province of Ontario Savings Office, it simply gave the holders' names, phone numbers and account balances to a private polling firm to conduct a survey.
In 1997, the Ontario Privatization Secretariat, under Privatization Minister Rob Sampson, obtained all the names, addresses, phone numbers, and account balances of depositors at the provincially owned Province of Ontario Savings Office, and turned them over to Angus Reid Group Inc. This information was hidden until January 2000.
Kenneth Kagen, a lawyer with the Ministry of Finance, specializing in freedom of information and privacy issues: "It is arguable that the Province of Ontario Savings Office's transfer of the personal information may be properly characterized as an authorized use of such personal information."Said Anne Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner:
"Under what stretch of the imagination would this be characterized in such a way that an individual would have reasonably expected this use of their account information? It's just too big a stretch."
Rob Sampson was the man who helped Tony Clement sell one of our highways. (they sold everything that wasn't nailed down, or at least tried to)
It was the minister, Tony Clement, who went first, steadfastly defending a decision at least ten of his Twitter followers support. He lamented the intrusiveness, he bemoaned the coercion. He managed to conclude his opening statement with the following shell game of a sentence: ”I encourage Canadians to fill out the national household survey should they choose to do so.” He seemed for the most part to be working on commission, paid per uses of the phrases “fair balance” and “jail” ... Not once, at least to these ears, did the minister concede that not a single Canadian has ever been so punished.
Parliamentary hearings on the census changes started with a bang on Tuesday morning, with opposition MPs grilling Industry Minister Tony Clement and accusing his government of creating a "manufactured crisis" over Canada's mandatory census. Liberal MP and Industry, Science and Technology critic Marc Garneau opened the questions to Clement, who oversees Statistics Canada,asking whether it's true the Privy Council Office and Finance Department recommended against these changes to the census — a situation related in some news reports.
Clement said he had "no knowledge" of what the Privy Council Office or Finance would have recommended in this case. He said his government altered the census to strike a "reasonable balance" between the need for the data and the desire to respect Canadians' privacy and not compel them to answer under threat of fines or jail time. His party's research showed that more complaints came in from citizens with each successive census and complaints "bubbled up" each time a new round began. Opposition MPs disputed the industry minister's claim that concerns about the census were widespread, with NDP MP Charlie Angus accusing Clement of "deliberately" mis-characterizing facts and making this decision based on ideology rather than fact.
... the census controversy was typical of the “rampage” against Canadian institutions the Conservatives have been on since taking power. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Environment Canada, The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Rights & Democracy, and now Statistics Canada… Which institution is the Harper government going to attack next?” he asked. Mr. Pratte went on to contend that the Harper government’s behaviour towards Statistics Canada has been guided by “simplistic ideology” and is further proof of the government’s “incompetence.” He argued that “a competent government would have asked Statistics Canada to do an in depth comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of mandatory versus voluntary census questionnaires […] Instead, the government decided on these changes, despite the reluctance of Statistics Canada, on the sole basis of some calls received by MPs at their riding offices. There are school boards governed more seriously than this.”
Here's the thing that does bother people though. The long form threatens 20% of all Canadians (that is how many are 'selected') with jail or other penalties if they don't cough up the info. Remember, these aren't people who are applying for permits or benefits. These are citizens just minding their own business. If you are among the groups of people who are demanding this free info I have a question for you based on past 'quizzes'. Do you think it is right that you can threaten your neighbour with jail time if she doesn't tell you if she has mental issues or not? Or who does what chores in the house? Or whether she is a Jew or not? Don't you find that one even a little bit chilling?
What I find chilling is that Stockwell Day is still in our government.
Ralph Goodale has explained very nicely the reasons for the census change, as well as clearly outlining the history of the Harper government ignoring facts, and attacking anyone who disagrees with them.
Thomas Walkom also points out the hypocrisy of this government:
Industry Minister Tony Clement says he’s axing the mandatory questionnaire because the state has no right to demand intrusive information, such as the number of bedrooms in a home. Yet his is the same government that requires airlines to collect and hand over detailed personal information on everyone who flies – and then give much of it to a foreign state.
It’s also the government that last month transformed downtown Toronto into an armed camp, where police arbitrarily stopped and searched people going about their lawful business and then—equally arbitrarily—arrested and jailed scores more. Until forced by the courts last year, Harper’s “non-intrusive” government used all of its power to keep Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik from returning to Canada.
Once Abdelrazik (who has been charged with no crime in any country) did return, this government intruded into his life to deny him the most basic rights: to work, to earn an income, to open a bank account. So no. The Harper government is not libertarian. It has used the full muscle of the state to walk over the civil and constitutional rights of those it purports to represent.
Or maybe they are just using the census to deflect attention away from the billions spent for the G-20, the billions being spent on military jets and the billions being wasted on tougher crime measures, when Canada's crime rate continues to decline.
The Reformers are sticking to their tired line that the census is too invasive and they don't want to intrude on our lives like that. Oh, really?
How about Canadians being reported if they appear at all suspicious when they're at the bank?
Imagine you are an ordinary Canadian. Like most ordinary Canadians, you have a bank account. Sometimes you go into the bank. And conduct various financial transactions. And the whole time, you are being monitored. By the government. Didn't know that? Of course not. It's secret. The law specifically says you must not be told when a report about you is filed.
The monitoring is conducted by the employees of the bank, not government officials. They have no choice. If they find your behaviour in any way "suspicious" — a term deliberately left vague — they must file a "suspicious transactions report" with a government agency, and they must not tell you they did so. If they fail to comply, they can be punished with up to $2 million in fines and/or five years in prison.
The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says a former Tory MP. The issue spilled onto the floor of the House of Commons on Thursday when Garth Turner, the expelled Tory-turned-Liberal MP, accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of an "unethical invasion of Canadians' privacy." Privacy experts agree the practice is a clear breach of standard privacy ethics - but probably not the law, because federal political parties fall into a legislative grey area. A recent mailing by the prime minister to some Jewish households, and households with Jewish-sounding names, highlighted the micro targeting that sophisticated modern databases now facilitate.
The Rosh Hashanah greeting from Harper prompted several recipients to complain to the federal privacy commissioner, who has begun a preliminary inquiry. It's cast a light on the 21st century art of political communication that may make some Canadians uneasy.
That sounds pretty invasive.
Or how about Harper MP Cheryl Gallant using personal information from passport applications?
In 2005 she sent out birthday cards to some of her constituents. The cards featured a picture of Gallant, with the words "May all your birthday wishes come true," and... were sent to residents who had unsuspectingly submitted passport applications at her Pembroke office.Several constituents accused Cheryl of obtaining birth-date information from a passport application during the 2006 campaign. One affected resident told the Ottawa Citizen "The principle is really bothering me: that my information has been gathered without my knowledge. I don't know how it's going to be used." Two families who received cards have sent letters to the privacy Commissioner of Canada, asking confirmation the MP won't use the collected personal information. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has no jurisdiction in investigating such matters.
That sounds pretty invasive.
Or Stephen Harper paying $ 75,000.00 a pop to spy on us when we're debating politics online?
The Harper government has been monitoring political messages online, and even correcting what it considers misinformation. One local expert says the government is taking things too far.Under the pilot program the Harper government paid a media company $75,000 to monitor and respond to online postings about the east coast seal hunt. UBC Computer Science professor and President of the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, Richard Rosenberg, says it seems unnecessary for the government to be going this far.
That sounds pretty invasive.
Their decision has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to protect our privacy. They just don't want a report card on how poorly they are doing, but more importantly they don't want stats that provide arguments against their bad decisions.
Opposition parties are calling for the Conservative government to reverse its "ideological" decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census, saying it has thrown Statistics Canada into "chaos." The calls by Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale and NDP MP Charlie Angus come a day after Munir Sheikh, the head of Canada's national statistical agency, resigned in protest over Industry Minister Tony Clement's decision to end the mandatory census.
Goodale told reporters in Ottawa on Thursday that the reputation of the internationally renowned agency is "hanging by a thread at the hand of a bumbling minister and a Conservative government that simply doesn't believe in fact-based decision-making." " 'Don't bother us with facts,' they say," Goodale said. "The result is a general dumbing down of government ...
Conservatives are going soft. Instead of stopping the dumbing-down of Canada at abolishing the mandatory long-form census, Stephen Harper should take the bolder step of dumping the eager beaver for the foolish ostrich. Even if its head-in-sand defence is a myth, the ostrich has other metaphorical merits as a fitting new national symbol. It’s been known to deliver devastating kicks to onrushing locomotives and isn’t naturally found in this northern habitat.
Conservatives share those characteristics. They resent the relentless march of progress and resist it with alien ideas imported from other places. Opting to know less about ourselves is about as smart as flying without instruments. Reliable information opens the decision-making conduit that carries us safely from present to future.
There is only one reason this census situation is so senselessly white-hot: the government's position. Its radical ideology and stunning stubbornness have raised the stakes alarmingly high. There must be plenty of Conservatives who are recoiling at the shenanigans of these so-called Conservatives.
Every time Industry Minister Tony Clement and the prime minister's spokesthingy says "coercive" and "intrusive" without bidding, my mind flashes up pictures of our own police in riot gear at the G20 protests and hundreds of people being filed into and out of detention centres for public disturbances like blowing bubbles. Is this my Canada?
Yes I would say getting the crap kicked out of you for peacefully protesting, and allowing male police officers to strip search women is pretty bloody invasive.
No, Mr. Simpson. This is not your Canada, or my Canada, it is his Canada. But not for long.
During the prorogation near catastrophe for the Harper government, insiders claimed that the decision to prorogue came from Stephen Harper's chief of staff Guy Giorno.
Apparently Harper himself only wanted to break for 10 days but Giorno convinced him that they could do far more damage if they had 2 1/2 months without the annoying opposition telling them that Canadians simply don't want this.
We also learned from John Ivison in his 'Judging Giorno" that the man was responsible for trying to end voter subsidies, the budget, the Canada Action Plan, refusing to hand over unredacted documents, the spending of tens of millions of dollars on signs and TV ads, leaving out abortion from maternal health, and pretty much every bad decision since he first joined the PMO in May of 2008.
But what also came out of the article was that their government is now operating from "crisis to crisis". And these crises are self inflicted. So was it Giorno who suggested that Harper end the census long form? Is he afraid of what the results will be after his (mis)handling of Stephen Harper?
And like any other crisis, the Harperites are trying to use the same old tired talking points to justify what they are doing. And like any other crisis, Stephen Harper is not going to handle it. He will allow everyone else to fight his battles. Some leader, huh?
The head of Stats Canada has resigned over the issue:
The embattled head of Statistics Canada has resigned over the Harper government's plan to scrap the mandatory long-form census, saying the replacement they propose for this will not work. In a letter on StatsCan website, Munir Sheikh refused to say what advice he gave the Conservatives when they asked him to make these changes. But he made it clear he cannot accept the scheme the Tories say is a perfectly adequate replacement for a compulsory long-form questionnaire.
"I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion," Mr. Sheikh wrote. "This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census. It cannot," he said. "Under the circumstances, I have tendered my resignation to the prime minister."
Abandoning the mandatory long form of the census will have ripple effects on Canadians because so many decisions are based on information leaned from it, critics of the change say. They argue that the voluntary system would introduce bias and reduce the reliability of data collected about individual neighbourhoods, wreaking havoc with local planning, experts say.
The Conservative’s plan to get rid of the mandatory long-form version of the census questionnaire has not gone over well at all in Quebec. A Presse Canadienne story published last Thursday declared that the Quebec government is “resolutely against” scrapping the long-form census. The article quoted Quebec Culture Minister Christine St-Pierre, who said she was “having difficulty understanding” why the government would do away with such “an essential tool” for researchers and policy-makers.
The problem of course is that Giorno will look at this situation as he does all others. How it will affect the polls and not how it will affect the country.
When Girono was making all of the horrible decisions for the Mike Harris government of Ontario, he earned the nickname Rasputin. And just as that "mad monk" helped to discredit the tsarist government, leading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty, Girono could very well cause the collapse the Harper regime.
Maybe we'll end up owing him a debt of gratitude after all.
After Maxime Bernier referred to those opposing the scrapping of the census long-form as "special interest groups" who could pay for the census themselves (it will cost us millions to scrap it), the list of those "special interest groups" is growing.
We are writing to request an opportunity to meet with you to discuss your Government’s recent decision to discontinue the Census long-form questionnaire and replace it with a new voluntary questionnaire, the National Household Survey. We are greatly concerned about this decision. Loss of the long-form Census information will cause considerable economic and social costs. The data are a key part of the decision-making processes of businesses, marketers, public service providers, community service providers, and charities. The effectiveness and responsiveness of public policy initiatives of federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments will be compromised. Canada is a vast country with considerable differentiation in the economic and social situations by geographical location. For many purposes the long-form Census questionnaire is the only valid source of data available of a local nature.
Some of those "special interest" include economist Don Drummond, Nik Nanos, Craig Alexander (President, Canadian Association for Business Economics and Chief Economist, TD Bank), Canadian Institute of Planners, Institute for Research on Public Policy, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, Canadian Labour Congress , Canada West Foundation, United Way, National Specialty Society for Community Medicine, Canadian Public Health Association, School of Public Policy and Governance - University of Toronto, Canadian Association of University Teachers, Canadian Council on Social Development, Canadian Economic Association, Toronto Board of Trade ...
This was a bad idea, but like all bad ideas that Stephen Harper has, he will not reverse them regardless of who criticizes him for them. No doubt this will be the same and he will again hope that it just goes away.
The problem is, his war against the Canadian people has a growing number of enemies, and he may wake up one day and wonder where all of his foot soldiers have gone.
I'm pretty sure that Stephen Harper's last speech was plagiarized from Rowan Atkinson. It sounds oddly familiar.
When Mr. Ignatieff spoke in Kingston today he made an interesting comment. This may not be the exact quote because while I wrote it down, my handwriting is atrocious.
But he suggested that rather than looking for the best in Canadians, Stephen Harper seeks out the worst.
They call it playing to their base, but in order to keep their base they just keep wallowing deeper and deeper into the mud. The latest census debacle is a perfect example. They were forced to lie, by stating that Canadians had been complaining about the extra paperwork.
Despite statements by the Conservative government that they scrapped the long-form census due to widespread privacy concerns from citizens, Canada's privacy watchdog has received just three complaints about the census in the last decade. Their office was not consulted on the government's decision, says Anne-Marie Heyden, spokesperson for Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, nor did they recommend the government drop the long-form mandatory questionnaire or replace it with a voluntary one.
"If we felt that would be warranted, I think that's something we would have recommended to them," she said. "I do want to emphasize the fact that we have a good working relationship with StatsCan and we've always worked closely with them to ensure that privacy rights are respected throughout the census process."
Three complaints in ten years? Well that's worth the millions of dollars they are going to spend on this. But it's more than just the cost.
The agency uses a rigorous methodology to select individuals who answer the questions on the long form. The selection process ensures that an accurate cross section of citizens who provide richer detail about their backgrounds. Researchers can then use that information in combination with other data sets to explain certain behaviour. For instance, do the prescription drug habits of people in a certain neighborhood have anything to do with socio-economic factors such as how much money they earn, or their ethnic background? Combining information from the long form with the actual prescription drug habits provides researchers in British Columbia with possible answers.
So if the information is so valuable, why is the government doing away with the census long form and replacing it with a survey that will cull similar information, but voluntarily? The government says it is simply responding to concerns of individuals who were worried about the intrusive nature of the questions.
Oh yes. The concerns of three people in ten years. I forgot about those guys.
But then John Baird jumped into the fray spouting nonsense. Is that boy on crack?
Standing beside Marjory LeBreton at the news conference in Ottawa was John Baird, the minister who has become the de facto spokesperson for the prime minister when he's not around. When asked about the long form and the reason for changing the government's policy, he gave an answer that left journalists scratching their heads.
"(The) government threatening to put people in jail if they don't tell how many bathrooms they have is a bit heavy handed and a bit ridiculous. We will respect peoples' right to privacy. At the same time the important information that's needed in the census will be gathered." Flummoxed, journalists pressed Baird and LeBreton to explain what they meant by throwing "people in jail."
What a kook. But there is a Facebook page where you can read and share stories. Vent, cry, laugh, then cry some more.
Ironically, the only complaint I ever heard was from an Evangelical who takes his Evangelism seriously. He opposed the census because they are now being processed by Lockheed Martin, a weapons manufacturer, and he opposes war.
The Opposition Liberals and New Democrats want a parliamentary committee reconvened this summer to probe the Harper government's decision to stop requiring that one-fifth of households fill out a lengthy census questionnaire. They want to Industry Minister Tony Clement called on the carpet to explain himself, saying the move will erode the ability of social scientists and policy makers to build an accurate picture of Canada.
It's the latest volley in what's become a culture-war battle between the right-wing Conservatives and their liberal-minded critics. Mr. Clement is refusing, however, to consider changing course, saying the Tories feel that compelling people to answer questions about their personal lives is an unwarranted intrusion of privacy
"Culture-war between the right-wing Conservatives and their liberal-minded critics?" What is wrong with you people? This is a war between the Harper government and the Canadian people.
Canada's minority Conservative government is under fire from business groups, economists, opposition parties, the media and others for cutting the work being done by the country's central statistics agency. The criticism -- much of it from groups that usually enjoy good ties with government -- is almost universal and is likely to be used as a weapon against the Conservatives in the next election campaign, expected within the next year.
