Friday Afternoon Links

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- No, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the choice to gut the long form census was "the prime minister's decision". But what's more striking in today's news is that the "decision" was made - and presented as being that, rather than a proposal - long before anybody bothered to examine the resulting negative effects.

- Since making a patronage appointment to the Senate to fill a cabinet space and try to position the beneficiary for a subsequent run for the House of Commons worked so well for the Cons last time they tried it, they're apparently giving it another shot.

- Robert Silver is on target with his take on the only way to ensure journalists can expect anything approaching honesty from their anonymous sources:

I have lost count of how many stories in Canada over just the last 12 months have been mirror images of this case. Writer puts forward juicy story based on unnamed sources, PMO denies any truth to the story, life goes on as if the story was never filed. It is certainly not confined to The Globe as pretty much every paper has been “burned” this way.

There are two solutions – and only two solutions – to this problem. Either papers should stop relying on unnamed sources and given the impossibility that this will happen, the other option is this: When a source burns a paper – when they put something out that turns out to be patently false – the affected paper should immediately refile the story with the names of the sources relied on included.

I have a feeling sources would stop making up nonexistent facts pretty quickly after a few of their colleagues get outed.

- And finally, Chris MacDonald's take on why we should all be concerned about corporate governance (no matter how remote it may seem from our daily lives) is well worth a read.