Well said

Paul Wells seems to agree with the theory that we should take the Cons' court stenographer at face value in saying that the goal of trashing the long-form census is nothing less than a full-on attack on the idea of effective government:

(C)learly Stephen Harper thinks it matters, because he has burned two useful ministers, Tony Clement and Stock Day, rather badly in advancing this little project. And I take Taylor’s July 22 post to be an example of the disarming frankness that makes him an easy guy to like. The whole post is worth a look. In his trademark prose style, Taylor describes Harper “integrating seemingly transactional initiatives into something transformative.” You see, the country is suspiciously full of “net tax receiving organizations.” Harper, Taylor writes, “has tried the ideological argument against these groups for years. But ideology is by its nature debatable; removing the framework of debate is his shortcut to victory.”

Removing the framework of debate? “If one day we have no idea how many divorced Hindu public transit users there are in East Vancouver, government policy will not be concocted to address them specifically.” This would be, Taylor adds, “a huge blow to the welfare state.”

This seems to me entirely more credible as a motivator than Clement’s and Day’s late-breaking concern for jackbooted census thugs hauling Jewish or many-bedroomed citizens off to the stockade for failing to divulge their pertinent information.
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I think most readers will see how Harper’s longstanding fascination with “back channels” as a means for advancing the agenda of actors who constitute “a political minority in Canada” and for whom “electoral politics is not an advantageous arena” plays, not only in the census battle, but in much of what he has done as Prime Minister.

So, like the Stephen Taylor of three weeks ago, I believe the census fight is absolutely at the centre of what Harper is trying to accomplish as prime minister.

One last thought. Taylor is (was?) sure the ultimate goal of all this manoeuvering is to “dismantle the welfare state.” It’s entirely possible to suppose that, at least over the medium term, which could last decades and indeed maybe forever, the real result would simply be the realignment of massive state action to serve the electoral interests of the Conservative Party. If one day we have no idea how many rock-ribbed family-values farmers and small tradesmen of Icelandic, Ukrainian, Scottish and Irish descent there are between Kenora and Kelowna, it will be easy enough for Tony Clement and Stockwell Day to claim there are 147 million of them and every one needs a tool-belt tax credit and a little something extra to help raise the kids.