Your daily census reading

There can't be much room for doubt that the Cons' census debacle is still worth discussing when the minister (nominally) responsible just made a new announcement yesterday. But in case there was any doubt that there's plenty left to say, let's check in with...the Globe and Mail editorial board:

Mr. Clement's promise yesterday to end the threat of jail time for those who don't fill out government surveys – an empty threat, in that it has apparently never been carried out – would address any concerns about heavy-handedness in the mandatory long-form census.

Mr. Clement doesn't seem to understand how he undermines his own arguments for a voluntary survey. Earlier this week, newly released government documents confirmed he had misrepresented Statistics Canada's views on the scrapping of the mandatory long-form census.

The mandatory long-form census gives Canadians good-quality information about their country. Mr. Clement is giving bad information to support his plan for bad-quality data. And Wednesday, on language, he admitted, by his actions, that he was wrong. Now he should admit he was wrong about the rest of the mandatory long-form survey.

And Frances Russell Murdoch:

Stephen Harper's Conservatives know that changing the 2011 long form census from compulsory to voluntary makes it useless for public and private Canadian decision-makers. In fact, that's exactly why they're doing it.

An economist, the prime minister understands the value of statistics. He appreciates that authoritative statistics on the relative social and economic well-being of individual Canadians empower the disempowered to demand government programs (higher taxes) to reduce poverty and disparity and promote upward mobility.

He also appreciates the need to dumb them down to facilitate stripping government back to its core functions: a strong military to defend the nation abroad, more police, prisons and tougher justice to defend the citizen at home and an unfettered free market to create wealth and employment through ever-lower taxes, especially on business and the well-to-do. Addressing social and economic inequality should be left to individual initiative and private charity.

That's why he's decided simply to stop gathering the numbers that provide an accurate socio-economic profile of Canadian society and, in the process, allow Clement to spread so much prevarication and misinformation that Canada's chief statistician, Munir Sheikh, was forced to resign.
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If you are determined to halt, if not roll back, Canada's advances in social and economic equality, turning the long form census into an unreliable statistical mishmash takes you a giant step towards your goal.

David Akin can't help himself even while trying to focus on some of the Cons' other mindless choices:

(T)his week, we got more evidence the federal government can be one dumb son-of-a-gun.

And, no, I’m not talking about the census.

That was really dumb, too, and the tiny tweaks offered up Wednesday by Industry Minister Tony Clement don’t make the government look any smarter.

In fact, you could say the government’s gone from dumb to dumber on that file. Removing some of the legal sanctions you might face for failing to fill out the mandatory short-form census that everyone gets now likely means more will not fill that form out.

So now the data from both the long-form and the short-form census — which will cost us millions more to collect — will both be less reliable.

And finally there's Haroon Siddiqui - who rightly notes that Cons' interference with the census likely puts Canada on the wrong side of a United Nations convention, though if anything I'd expect the Cons to turn that into a "black helicopters" defence:

This may be a matter of ideological faith for (Stephen Harper). It may be as ideological or bone-headed or a signature issue as the plan to waste $9 billion building jails when the crime rate is going down.

Or he is stubborn. Or authoritarian, a bully who brooks no dissent. Or he believes that backing away, even in the face of a trans-Canada revolt, is a sign of weakness or would be seen as such (though thinking so may be the surest sign of a frightened and insecure man).

Regardless, he may have put Canada in violation of a United Nations convention. We are a signatory to the UN Statistical Commission’s 1994 Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.

The first principle describes official statistics as “an indispensable element in the information system of a democratic society.” Such data should be “made available on an impartial basis by official statistical agencies to honour citizens’ entitlement to public information.”

Harper has violated the letter and certainly the spirit of the second, third, fourth and fifth principles:

• Official statistics-gathering agencies should be run independently “according to strictly professional considerations . . . for the collection, processing, storage and presentation of statistical data.”

• They should apply “scientific standards on the sources, methods and procedures of the statistics.”

• They should be free “to comment on erroneous interpretation and misuse of statistics.”
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Harper imposed a political decision on StatsCan and also muzzled its freedom to speak out. About 200 pages of internal memos released Tuesday revealed how the Prime Minister abused the Privy Council Office to dictate what agency officials could say on the issue.