Measured contributions

While the Cons are making every effort to change the subject from their census vandalism, they haven't been able to stop people far more competent than themselves from keeping the issue alive. So let's quickly survey what's happened over the last little while.

The most noteworthy development was of course the proposal - made by Alex Himelfarb and Mel Cappe among others - to remove any political authority to interfere with Canada's chief statistician's judgment as to what should be included in the census. While the suggestion would have its own limitations (since the chief statistician will inevitably fall under some level of political influence), it does seem to avoid the problems with trying to dictate the contents of the census more directly - making it highly promising as a potential consensus solution.

Meanwhile, Stephen Gordon links to a series of short papers in Canadian Public Policy which collectively show exactly how the Cons are damaging both Canada's ability to govern itself, and its standing in the world.

Finally, while it's worth a reminder that businesses will suffer just as much as governments in the absence of accurate information about Canadians, Wayne Roberts is right to note that the Cons' destruction of the census fits a long-running pattern of trying to tilt the balance of knowledge toward the corporate sector rather than government:

In an era when it’s axiomatic that you can’t manage what you can’t measure, taking accessible measurement information out of the public realm is a way of transferring management from the public to the corporate sphere. Many companies have as much information on customers’ habits as their therapists, and now, in Canada, they’ll have a monopoly on the kind of data needed to plan.

During the 90s, in the first phase of neo-liberalism in Canada, when it was said that the task of government was “to steer, not to row,” Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney closed down the Economic Council of Canada, while Ontario premier Mike Harris shut the doors on the Premier’s Council on Health and the one on science and technology – ensuring that corporations, not governments, owned the tools for effective steering.

After a decade’s lull, the Conservatives are at it again. The hidden assumption is that the days of government planning are numbered and only one force needs fine-grained information on social and health trends: the market.