Sunday Afternoon Links

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- Joan Bryden notes that even pollsters are warning against paying too much attention to tiny fluctuations in their results:

(T)he media often trumpet shifts in provinces or other small sub-samples of the population, like urban women or educated males. But with MOEs of as much as 10 percentage points, seemingly huge 20-point fluctuations are actually statistically meaningless.

"I've seen pollsters comment one week, you know, 'The Tories are dead in Quebec' only to have this magical resurrection the week after and there's a pressure to sort of explain that and you come up with saying, 'You know, well, (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) made this statement or he wore this tie,'" says Mukerji.

"I think if you take a step back and look at the general trend, there hasn't actually been all that much that's changed, quite frankly, in the party standings."

- I tend to agree with the theory, raised by Alan Shanoff among others, that the recently-developed responsible communication defence to libel or slander claims should be a guiding principle in determining how the CRTC should handle false news. But it's also worth pointing out where the law of defamation falls short of protecting the public interest: shouldn't the need for responsible journalism be just as obvious when a broadcast involves subject matter that isn't so directly aimed toward an individual's reputation as to be enforceable through a private lawsuit?

- Stephen Gordon criticizes the new head of Statistics Canada for being willing to spout the Cons' party line on the census even when his organization has conclusively refuted the claim that there's any real prospect of a voluntary survey providing data of the same quality as a mandatory census:

In point of fact, Statistics Canada has done quite a bit of research documenting the fundamental flaws associated with voluntary surveys; see Kevin Milligan's guest post as well as this. Insisting that "critics cannot be sure" is a remarkable thing for a Chief Statistician to say; statistics is not in the business of providing absolute certainty.
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I understand that as Chief Statistician, there are certain truths that Mr Smith cannot speak in public. But that's no excuse for making statements that are contrary to available evidence. Statistics Canada has a reputation to maintain; Mr Sheikh resigned in order to protect it. It would be a very bad thing indeed if Statistics Canada is itself the next victim in the continuing assault on evidence-based policy.

- Finally, while the conventional wisdom is that cabinet ministers have absolutely no ability to act outside the wishes of the Harper PMO, let it never be said that at least some cabinet ministers can't take a stand on principle. That is, when it comes to true matters of conscience such as airplane colour schemes. I'm sure news will soon leak that despite his census embarrassment, Tony Clement should be seen as a maverick for refusing direct orders as to his tie selection.