Thursday Morning Links

This and that to start your day...

- The Globe and Mail editorial board isn't about to let the Cons' continued census nonsense pass without criticism:

Most Canadians are simply not disturbed by the questions they are asked on the mandatory long-form census. There is no groundswell of opposition. There is not even a ripple. According to nearly everyone who has expressed an informed opinion, including two former chief statisticians at Statistics Canada, the voluntary replacement will be less accurate and hence less useful. It also costs more.

There is less shame in admitting that a new policy was poorly conceived than in defending a nonsensical position with inflated claims, to the bitter end.

- Haroon Siddiqui weighs in on how Michaelle Jean should have handled Stephen Harper's threats against her and the country at large:

(T)he GG, who’s supposed to be above politics, fell for Harper’s politics of bullying. She blinked — and set a bad precedent.

We have since learned that should Jean have denied Harper’s request, he would have gone over her head to the Queen or attacked Jean and the legitimacy of her office.

If so, that would have been just fine, exposing him as too power hungry to respect parliamentary traditions, and he would’ve had to face the music from Canadians.

What transpired on Dec. 4, 2008, was bad enough. In trying to whitewash her role in it, Jean belittles the highest office in the land.

The job of the GG is far more than cutting ribbons and eating seal heart. It is to encourage, advise and warn the prime minister that the constitutional buck stops at Rideau Hall, not 24 Sussex Dr.

- David Akin points out the one real precondition to an effective access to information system:

The changes we need are simple: We need a commitment from current and future governments that they will honour not only the letter of ATI laws but also the spirit. This means, among other things, providing ATI offices within each government department the appropriate financial resources to do their jobs.

Access to information and privacy analysts — the fancy name for the censors who black out parts of records we’re not allowed to see — complain of job stress, while their supervisors complain of high staff turnover and difficulty finding and training enough analysts.

So find the money already. Hire some people. Obey the law.

- Finally, James Travers is far too willing to play into the false dichotomy between the Cons and Libs. But he's absolutely right about the effect of the billions the Cons have thrown into their assortment of ideological crusades and photo ops:

Conservatives have a problem dismissing promised Liberal help for the sick and seniors as just more tax and spend waste. Canadians can now answer the question “what is a billion?” It’s the price of summer summits more memorable for runaway costs and riots than lasting achievements.
...
After years of widely-supported investment in a hollowed-out military, Conservatives are now struggling to explain the largest arms purchase in our history. Among Harper’s challenges is explaining how such a sophisticated stealth fighter as the F-35 meets Canada’s varied and often simpler needs, why a $16 billion contract wasn’t open to competitive bidding and what can be done to control costs soaring so fast that other NATO purchasers are getting cold feet.

Then there’s the price tag attached to tossing more Canadians in prison and keeping them there longer. At a time when crime rates are falling, Conservatives plan to spend a fortune — Kevin Page, Parliament’s stellar budget officer, projects new costs at over $5 billion — to jail, among others, Stockwell Day’s slippery perpetrators of unreported crime.
...
Meaningful choice has largely been missing from recent fights for federal supremacy. What’s changed is that Liberals are finally offering alternatives and Canadians now know what a billion is and how effortlessly it can be spent on next to nothing.