Did you hear that the country is about to stop working? That governments across the country will never be able to make an intelligent, sensible decision ever again?
Well none of that is true but you would think it were given the hyperventilating going on in official Ottawa these days. Opposition parties are in a tizzy, journalists are beside themselves – or at least each other as they lock arms to fight this dunderheaded decision of the Harper government!
The Hill has been so fixated on this one issue that Stephen Harper could very well install himself as prime minister for life and most newsrooms wouldn’t notice. If ever there was an issue that divided Main Street, Canada from the chattering classes this is it.
Oh and what exactly is the issue? The Harper government wants to change the long-form census, from a mandatory document sent to one in five houses into a voluntary form sent to one in three homes. The government says the change will still provide valid data, the experts and opposition say it will render the census inaccurate, the public says, “Who cares?”
But set aside for a moment whether the public cares and examine the main arguments being put forward for keeping the current census format, including the threat of jail time if you don’t answer the questions. Time and again experts tell us that unless the long-form census is mandatory the data will be skewed.
Postmedia, the people that used to be called CanWest, quote Ivan Fellegi, a man who worked at Stats Can for 50 years, 23 of them as the Chief Statistician. “Every ounce of my professional knowledge, which is certainly the same professional knowledge that is very widespread at Statistics Canada, tells me that this is statistically absolutely wrong.”
If that is true then most of the data that Stats Can produces is useless. Every month the unemployment rate and GDP numbers are issued and governments and markets react. Apparently that is foolish, those numbers are not based on mandatory forms sent to 20% of all Canadians, and going by what the experts say, that means it is all skewed data.
The Canadian Medical Association Journal took a strong stand as well, “It provides accurate and reliable data on social trends and issues, including the determinants of health, such as the relationships among income, gender, education, region, work and other factors that influence access to care and health outcomes,” the CMAJ said in a recent missive.
It all sounds wonderful coming from the learned doctors at the CMAJ except that it is pure bunk. Like the other experts, the doctors say that unless the census is mandatory the data will be, in their words, “largely unusable.” The doctors tell us that they use the census data to examine health outcomes, which means they use data other than the long form census, data that must come from voluntary methods of collection. You see, the census in 2006 asked very limited questions about health, the 2011 census asks none. If the only reliable data is the mandatory kind, then the health reports put out by CMAJ are useless.
It is easy to poke holes in the flimsy reasons that the government has stated for changing the census and my colleagues have done that in spades over these last two weeks of censusmania. It would be nice if they turned their fine analytical skills upon the experts they so dutifully quote and examine the logic that underpins “the expert” point of view.
As for the government’s decision to change the census, they should just come out and be honest. They are changing it because the prime minister doesn’t like the current census and the threat of jail time for refusing to divulge how many bedrooms you have and who pays the bills. End of story.
====
A sampling of census questions the “experts” want to force you to answer:
48. (a) What time did this person usually leave home to go to work?
53. In 2010, did this person pay child or spousal support payments to a former spouse or partner?
F4. (a) How many rooms are there in this dwelling?
(b) How many of these rooms are bedrooms?
F6. Is this dwelling in need of any repairs?
F8. For this dwelling, what are the YEARLY payments (last 12 months) for:
(a) electricity?
(b) oil, gas, coal, wood or other fuels?
(c) water and other municipal services?
47. (a) How did this person usually get to work?
If this person used more than one method of travel to work, mark the one used for most of the travel distance.
Mark “Subway, light rail or elevated rail” for:
• Vancouver SkyTrain
• Calgary CTrain
• Scarborough RT
Mark “Commuter train or VIA Rail” for:
• Vancouver West Coast Express
• Toronto GO Train
m Car, truck
or van — as a driver
m Car, truck Continue with Question 47 (b)
or van — as a passenger
m Bus or streetcar
m Subway, light rail or elevated rail
m Commuter train or VIA Rail
m Passenger ferry
m Walked to work Go to Question 48 (a)
m Bicycle
m Motorcycle, scooter or moped
m Other method
Tags: 2011 long-form, census, chattering classes
Your assertion that unemployment data from StatCan are “not based on mandatory forms sent to 20% of all Canadians” is incorrect. Monthly unemployment figures come from the Labour Force Survey, which (in addition to being mandatory) uses long-form census data as part of its sampling procedure.
I hope you will consider correcting this factual inaccuracy in your article.
I agree there is some hyperventilating going on but your argument against it is incorrect. The job and employments are not the same since they only ask for once piece of data and can be collected and crossreferenced against various other economic data the government has access to. The data on the long form census really can’t come from anywhere else, and its the fact that it is all collected at once, from the same people and it done on such an enormous sample that makes it so important. It is also quite a chore to fill out, so if its not mandatory, frankly a lot of people won’t do it. But its important that they do and really, they’ll probably only get it once or twice in their whole life.
The reason people are getting so worked up is that this is essentially an anti-scientific government that is constantly avoiding using logic and sound scientific reasoning to make its decisions. It denies and avoids the truth of environmental change, tries to skirt around reproductivity issues, tries to end legitimate studies into alternate drug rehabilitation projects and others. This change in the census is so glaring and straightforward an attack on reasoned, scientific processes that it is rightly getting a lot of people upset. This isn’t the way Canada is supposed to be run, we don’t all live in paranoid fear of what Ottawa will do with our information. We’re reasonable people with a reasonable system of governance, why would we worry about that? We should do the reasonable thing and keep collecting this data.
The left tell us Stephen Harper is evil and will sell us all into slavery if he gets a majority.
So naturally their reaction is to insist he gets more information on them and that he keep the gun registry intact.
No,.. it doesn’t make sense to me either…
Brian – You’re right Brian. No one I know is talking about this issue around the water-cooler or at the cottage. I’m thinking it’s another one of those non-issue that oppositions and their media like to hang on because they’ve simply got nothing else to talk about now that the economies on an upswing and folks are pretty happy with Harper as PM.
Keep up the common sense writing – we need that in spades in this country!
Oh what utter BS – guess that’s why your work for the tacky Sun.
Actually, I guess you’re expected to side with Harper no matter what.
Yup – Harper’s summer wedge issue to distract from G20, military spending, etc.
Harper is a chicken – he’s afraid to take responsibilty so invents nonsense for his ideological base.
How pathetic
Sandra, you’re an idiot. Instead of ad hominem attacks against the PM hoa about attacking what is in the article?
You people are so inept, please go back to the Globe & Mail site where you can all heap praise upon one another for your grands insights into your own minds by clicking the “thumbs up” button.
“Every month the unemployment rate and GDP numbers are issued and governments and markets react. Apparently that is foolish, those numbers are not based on mandatory forms sent to 20% of all Canadians, and going by what the experts say, that means it is all skewed data.”
Actually, the monthly Labour Force Survey IS MANDATORY, also.
Brian:
<>. A lot of Candians do. Over 7800 have signed a petition saying so and look at where they are from – outside Ottawa.
One of the prices you pay to live in this country is to offer up some personal information so that governments and NGO’s can plan for the future. I guess you don’t care about the future.
Harper made a bad decision (Tony’s just the shill) and, like all emperors, is refusing to reconsider. Thousands have spoken but…..so much for democracy.
Read this:
http://www.eaves.ca
and this:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/us-tested-then-scrapped-a-move-to-voluntary-census/article1645137/
Hi Brian,
Would you mind explaining the relationship between the census, the data it generates, and the monthly economic data Stats Can sends out about the GDP?
Because I believe the answer will be ‘there is no relationship’ — in which case you’ve thrown up a big honking lie in the middle of your opinion piece.
That just makes your argument weaker. You should stick to the facts and interpretation based on the facts, like, oh I dunno — the census!
Stan — the only people who say Harper will sell us into slavery are people on the right who deliberately lie about criticism launched against the prime minister. Nobody on the left believes any Canadian politician is about to become a slavemaster.
Pretty much every one from all walks of life – from rabid right wingers to sensible lefties have condemned this move; but you say “main street” doesn’t care about it.
About the only one who I’ve heard that doesn’t care is… you!
So you’re that “main street” creature that no one has ever seen, eh? Add that to the census.
Your offhand dismissal of the many and varied interests – right and left – that have come out to call Harper et al on the folly of this move suggests that you are nothing but a Harperite bobblehead. Go bobble.
Too bad you haven’t a clue about what you are talking about… Of course, you work for the Sun, right?
So good readers please tell me what exactly excites you about filling out the long form census package that may come to you. More importantly do you really care or is this just another forum for you to gripe about anything that Harper does and those who inject a bhit of common sense into the debate to be ridiculed?
The topic has been given a prominent place in the media, particularly the CBC — any stick to beat the donkey. It has also generated a great deal of e-mail traffic around the universities (not so much around the water cooler as the halls of academia are pretty empty right now, except for the staff, who are not remotely interested). Statscan data, as manipulable as any other data, has been raised to totemic status by many of my colleagues, who, in other contexts, deride the very concept of “facts”.
Hmmm.
Let’s see. I can take the word of experts, and statisticians, who have studied and worked in this area for years, or I can take the word of a journalist, who has written articles for years. Oh dear, I wonder who is right about this issue…
In any event, who cares if people don’t care. Seriously, that has got to be one of the lamest reasons not to oppose this change that I have seen. The issue is not whether people “care”, the issue is whether the census will be rendered basically useless by making it voluntary – and the people who actually know what they are talking about say it will. Governments have to do the right thing whether or not people are paying attention. That is called governing for the good of the country.
Though I do not think you are concerned about the people who do not care – you are concerned that the media coverage will make people pay attention.
As one who was called to fill out the last census long form, I can say it is in total highly intrusive. Since the results are sold as well as being used for government purpose, protests of confidentiality are hard to believe, especially where results show a “fingerprint” in a small area. If this is not an issue on main street, then it is probably because most of main street has not received such a form. If you have, however, you had best expect to spend several days at it if you want to be accurate. I suspect most of these forms are filled out in haste and the answers are unlikely to be accurate in any event.
Besides, no case has been made that government cannot function without such a brutal and invasive form of interrogation under duress.
You are right Brian, we don’t need the long census, it looks like another liberal faux pas.
HOORAY ! Hopefully this is just the beginning of a campaign to get rid of the Nannies.
You’re sadly mistaken, Mr. Lilley, sadly mistaken. I guess this is a preview of Fox North. Any opinion from educated, experienced sources is characterized as elitest and detrimental to the interests of the common man. The delicious irony in all of this is that the donut shop philosophers who fall for this Bushspeak are the very ones who will suffer the most if the Tories ever attain a majority.
And Cathy’s comments above read just like talking points with all the key phrases the Tory politicos want to hear.
Obviously, you don’t read. There are plenty of Conservatives out West and Business and Commerce leaders in Toronto opposed to the change in the census. Don’t peg this as an Ottawa thing — makes you look ignorant.
I guess when they say silly season is alive and well in Ottawa it must be true. Do the chattering classes believe that the vast majority of Canadians are going to vote based on whether the long form census is mandatory or voluntary? Give me a break.
The media is being disingenous to put it kindly. The government is not eliminating the census it is removing the criminality of not completing it. That requires discussion? Once again the media/interest groups are losing their collective minds.
The idiot MPs will return to parliament, they will hold another kangaroo court, accuse the government of all manner of things and bring in a pile of eggheads as witnessess who will preach the end of the country is nigh and then they will all go home.
The fact is this is a government decision. Legislation is not required so the parties who think our democracy is at stake will have to look for another faux scandal in the weeks to come.
“One of the prices you pay to live in this country is to offer up some personal information so that governments and NGO’s can plan for the future. I guess you don’t care about the future.”
What a sheep-like thing to say. I’m astounded that free people feel compelled to answer intrusive questions to a ‘mere government’. The government has no business prying into my life to that extent. Stats Can?.. Who cares. NGO’s? Piss off! I don’t want the policy-weenies knowing anything about me. How I get to work is important how? Is my house repair status really important? No!
What is so scary is all these people who seem to think its the government’ ‘right to know’ this stuff as a condition of living here. What utter crap. Have all you sheeple forgotten that the government works FOR you…not the other way around?
Want to get the Long Form census filled out properly?… pay me $5.00 to fill it out. Don’t threaten to put me in jail. Hello? Carrot/ Stick…..
My government shouldn’t be looking for ways to threaten me, jail me, or fine me, for being a good little taxpayer. The people who think forcing the citizens of this country to divulge this information are fascist pure and simple.
At least a voluntary census might render accurate information. When you force or coerce people to fill out a long form census, they are mightily inclined to fill it out incorrectly out of spite. I for one, did exactly that.
Government can shove it, thank-you-very-much.
Wow, I was going to ask what part of the Scientific Method you are failing to grasp, but it appears the whole thing is out of reach for you.
Feel free to contact me, I would be pleased to teach a remedial course in the Scientific Method and Peer Review, for you and any parliamentarians who are having trouble grasping the corner stones of contemporary thought.
Amen, ‘Arctic-front’! The long form must be either universal or not at all. This arbitrary assignment of who MUST fill it out should be an affront to every rational Canadian.
re: the CMAJ’s view being “pure bunk” since the census long form doesn’t ask many health q’s:
You’re an idiot, Lilley. The reason this fine-grained demographic info. is vital to almost every other population survey is that it provides the true (or as true as possible, given that, yes, some misguided people screw around with their answers) baselines w. which to “weight” the responses from the much smaller surveys….
so that the responses from a survey with only, say, 1,000 respondents — of whom x were disabled, y low income, etc. etc. — can be reasonably projected to percentages for the population as a whole.
Learn a bit about the topic before popping off about it.
RE: arctic_front: (July 20, 2010 at 11:09 am)
I love how knee-jerk anti-government types are so quick to point out that governments work ‘for us’, while at the same time insisting we do everything in our power to prevent them from doing a good job.
I know you were trying to be ironic and rhetorical, but how you get to work and whether your house is in good repair is important because the job that you pay the government to do is to ensure the infrastructure and resources exist to get to work and maintain a certain standard of living.
You can argue about how good a job they do, but not the fact that they need the right information to do that job. If someone works for you, it would be nice if you told them what sort of work you would like to get done.
Information is necessary in order to make decisions, and while filling it out incorrectly helps with your illusion that you are principled and anti-fascist, it actually serves no practical purpose other than to waste resources and make ‘your employees’ job more difficult.
So let’s see if I have most of you correctly…
obtaining information from Omar Khadr or KSM under duress and threat of penalty is wrong, and leads to false or misleading information, but obtaining information from your fellow citizens under duress leads to… good information?
So here’s what I suggest – all those who feel the long form census form should be mandatory can request one from Stats Canada and fill it out. The rest of us will happily sit back and answer the basic questions and that’s it.
By the way, to all of you who advocate a mandatory long-form, should those 21,000 people who answered “Jedi” as a religion be punished if the Jedi Order didn’t exist as an established religion in Canada at the the time of the last census?
@ Andrew: no, you probably don’t have _any_ one’s views on this correctly. Extracting a confession for a capital crime of murder from a minor in a foreign country through the use of torture — which absolutely no one here mentioned — is hardly the same as threatening a fine of $500 for refusing to fill out a government form properly. And it’s a complete straw man argument to represent the critics’ views as saying that only coerced information is good information. They’re saying the only way we can have 99% confidence in the baseline demographic data is if 99% of those who were randomly selected to fill out actually do so to the best of their ability. As for the Jedi Mind Trick thing of the _tiny_ (relative to 30 Million!) no. of people who do screw around with the answers, well, those are outliers which can be discounted by those use the data and at any rate are too small to impact it meaningfully… except for those who are using it to tell outlandish lies about the survey’s data quality.
It’s a step in the right direction for the Canadian media.
Instead of fabricating inane stories like Wafergate and pumping them up far beyond what any rational person would care about they are taking existing inane stories and pumping them up far beyond what any rational person would care about.
A journey of a thousnad miles begins with a single step…..
Well as a gunowner I can tell you that previous governments ignored all the Stat’s Can data when they created the various Firearms Acts. The number of times a lawabiding citizens use a legal firearm in a crime is stunningly small. So instead of using that data the Liberals went ahead and spent 2 billion dollars on the gun registry instead.
I can see why people want this form gone, the threat of jail time for not filling out a form that is invasive is far to Orwellian for me. Six months in jail and $500 fine is more than most petty crooks get nowadays. CPC supporters who vote, donate and volunteer for the party are fairly issue specific and I would not be surprised that the demand for this change is a grassroots initiative from their core supporters.
I was visiting N.S. when this broke as news. Surely some one can bring a more substantial issue to the table.
It’s embarrassing
Thanks for letting us know what’s happening in Ottawa! I don’t really give a whack about this except that I will answer A to all of the questions in the census long form if I am forced to fill it out. You aren’t paying me to do it, so forget it.
As for the first couple of loons who are trying to justify this – they are exactly that. Who believes the information is correct? Who is doing data checking? How many recipients don’t speak English or French? Do we send the Inuit a special long form? The government is not anti-science, it is anti-stupid. We just don’t swallow the crap that experts say. For every expert point of view there are likely 3 other viewpoints.
Thanks again for a fair and balanced article. Nobody attacked the premise of your piece, or the conclusion….
You’ve pegged it about right Brian. The Liberal loving media is still looking for that elusive “outrage” that will stick to the Conservatives and just can’t find one. After all, the “go for broke” Liberal bus ride this summer looks like it’s not working, so they’ve simply got to find something to tar the Conservatives with. We need an election to put a stop to this insanity.
When you have men in power who believe the “end-time” is on the near horizon it makes perfect sense that information to be used for future planning be tossed out.
If Canada is to prepare to be a host for survivors of the Rapture, all this information will be useless.
Ask Stockwell Day.
Nobody outside of Ottawa cares about this. Nobody. The 7,800 signatures one commentator above refers to on a petition are almost certainly all died-in-the-wool Harper-haters, so they don’t matter (note to petitioner – there are 34 million Canadians).
If this is so offensive and critical to ordinary Canadians, or if any of the other fake huff-and-puff opposition “scandals” of the past two years, and the usual MSM (ie. anti-Harper) media believe any of these are an issue to real ordinary Canadians, then force your election now. You have a majority. Call the question.
You won’t, because the real election ballot questions will be a) leadership and b) the economy. Opposition parties lose on both, big time. So give it your best shot – now – please!
Looks like this evidence-hating gov’t & the coterie of their hard-core supporters have already been shown to be talking out of their heinies on this one:
A preliminary poll shows fully half of Canadians already think this is a bad idea:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/canada/consensus+census+debate+Poll/3302580/story.html
Evidence and science are fundamentally left-wing because the world is an unpleasant place the truth is shocking. So shocking that is requires change. Change does not usually come from conservatives and the right wing, unless it is change that opposes reality:
* ignoring what the population actually does
* ignoring what makes up the current population
* ignoring the actual effects of laws they create
* ignoring scientific evidence of behaviors
* ignoring scientific evidence of damages to people, property and the environment.
* ignoring evidence of injustice
Essentially the right tries to ignore everything and revert it back to something that makes sense to them.
So of course just about anyone who supports the right will support a lack of truth and a lack of evidence because it the truth requires us to learn, grow and change, 3 things that do not define conservatism and conservative values (except maybe the old PC).
Who cares?Well for one I do and I certainly hope there’s lots of other folks that do too. When I bother to write a post I care about it being read. I yearn for many to read it because I feel I have something to say that could make a difference. Isn’t that the way you think when you voice your opinion? generally when we bother to speak out we all like to be heard. A fact that ruling parties these days have either forgotten or more to the truth they have been already paid to listen only to the paying party and any differing opinion has to come from an obviously subversive element out to destroy our perfect govt. who for the most part should stay out of all decisions regarding monetary policies, have no say in foreign affairs, ( as super genius private armies like Halliburton are much more qualified), and stay out of telling normal people how to think, for in this category it is well known the super rich have very strict guidelines to be followed by all or suffer the consequences of jail or worse. I don’t know what you would call me. Some would call me a terrorist because I stand ready to defend my country from the govt. Actually the general public have no govt right now. The country is being ran by corporate interest entirely. Barrack is trying, bless his heart, but he wont have much luck. For example the bailout. To big! Be trueful how many of you went for it? Those that own America aren’t about to give up control without a fight. Try to do something and see what happens to you. For the general public to take back control believe me there will be bloodshed and many named terrorist. I personally am ready to battle. Someone needs to step out and lead us. You cant blame anyone but big money for the crises we are in. It is exclusively there fault Their greed, There manipulation of our money, their buying laws they wrote excusing them of any thing illegal. Kind of sounds like the mafia doesn’t it. What has been done is entirely immoral, at one time would have been looked on as illegal, and would have resulted in the perpetrators being ran out of town. Liars that constantly lie to each other soon lose sense of what is right , began believing each other , and create a separate reality they know to be the one we all lost. Hence our wretched finical condition, I don’t believe they realize there are some of us that sit outside of their world and see the fabricated reality they created and exist in and that we can see All the lies, (almost every word they utter), It has to stop before any real recovery can happen. In the world described and defined by them there can be no real gain. The earth is basically blue and green. No amount of believing can Make it become silver and gold. Have faith they say. No you have faith I’ll believe in what I can grasp and hold onto with my hands and call that “what is real” and only that. People have to realize making money off of make believe cant last forever. sooner or later we wake up and find our wealth turned to water and ran out of our hands and back into the pool we call the sea. Do I ramble on? Sorry I’ll try to concentrate more from now on. Bye Bye
Wait, so if “the public says, “Who cares?”” then why is the government attempting to introduce ideological change???