Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Munir Sheikh writes (PDF) about good data and intelligent government. I'll add the subtitle, "and other perceived threats to the Harper Conservatives".

- Aside from the occasional expose on working conditions, there's been remarkably little challenge to the top-heavy development plan for the oil sands from the workers involved. Which means that it's great news to see workers challenging the Keystone XL pipeline over the potential jobs being shipped out of Canada.

- Meanwhile, at least one researcher is sounding the alarm over the Cons' cuts to Environment Canada as well.

- Finally, Tim Naumetz profiles Paul Dewar as an NDP leadership candidate, while Mia Rabson's article on Niki Ashton features some familiar names.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Bryan Breguet crunches the numbers as to how today's Quebec polling projects into seats, coming up with the following results:

NDP: 31 (CROP), 32 (EKOS)
Bloc: 28 (CROP), 22 (EKOS)
Libs: 9 (CROP), 12 (EKOS)
Cons: 7 (CROP), 9 (EKOS)

Which nicely matches my rough estimate of the relative position of the NDP, Bloc and Libs. And will hopefully help the media to stop coupling polls showing the NDP at 36% with analysis suggesting that it's only in contention in six seats.

- David Climenhaga is right to note that the Harper Cons' constant set of attacks on the Libs has worked to the NDP's advantage. But it's worth noting that plenty of other attacks have had a similar effect too.

After all, the Bloc's attacks on Harper for two election cycles have ensured that the Cons couldn't win more than a handful of Quebec seats. And the attacks on the Cons by all parties have played into the NDP's "Ottawa is broken" narrative to help the party appeal to good-government voters.

So the real story is that while the rest of the parties figured the NDP could safely be ignored (allowing Layton to build popularity and the party to build trust on policy issues) only to be marginalized once election day drew closer, the actual campaign is proving otherwise.

- Munir Sheikh is the latest to point out how corporate tax cuts may merely transfer revenue from Canada to the U.S. rather than encouraging investment or economic growth anywhere.

- Michael Byers has apparently converted to the view that strategic voting does more harm than good.

- It isn't particularly news that the Cons relish the opportunity to poke organizations like Planned Parenthood in the eye for having the nerve to try to improve sexual health around the world. But I don't think there's much doubt they'd hoped to avoid having that reality surface during the campaign.

- Finally, Barbara Yaffe notes that both the Cons and Libs are focusing their campaigns mostly on scare tactics which don't seem to be working.

On unpleasant facts

Munir Sheikh offers an example of the type of information Canadian policymakers will lack if the Cons' choice to gratuitously gut the census is allowed to stand:

Take, for example, the average income levels of groups of immigrants relative to native Canadians from each of the 5-year census cycles beginning with the 1975-79 group and ending with the latest 2000-2004 group.

Data from the long-form census offers two important conclusions. First, economic performance of immigrants, as captured by the earnings of immigrants relative to the native population, is on a downward trend. Second, this gap does not close even after immigrants have been here for up to 20 years. These are unpleasant facts.

A more detailed look at the data indicates some positive recent developments but they appear not to have taken hold. For example, the 1990-94 group of immigrants did marginally better than the 1985-89 group after working for six to 10 years.

Unfortunately, that improvement proved temporary. The 1995-99 group seems to have done better than the 1990-94 group soon after arriving, but their advantage also appears to be slipping away. To make matters worse, the performance of the 2000-04 group has fallen below that of the 1995-99 group.

Governments may look at this long-form census information to monitor the situation and attempt to improve it by changing policies. Some changes have been announced in the recent past, such as those focused on the economic class applicants, the Canada experience class and the provincial nominee programs. Would these changes be effective in improving outcomes and, if yes, by how much?

With the government’s decision to abolish the long-form census, it is not clear how one would get reliable answers to these important questions.

Steps forward

It's easy enough to get accustomed to the steady stream of bad news on a federal scene where the party in power displays the Cons' combination of incompetence and disdain for government. But there are a couple of positive developments on the opposition side worth noting.

First, Brian Masse's proposal to remove the political influence that allowed the Cons to gut the long form census looks to solve most of the issues with trying to legislate what gets asked. About the only danger is the question of what would happen in the event that a Con ideologue actually took over the position of chief statistician - but since that doesn't seem to be an issue even after the Cons named Munir Sheikh's replacement, Masse's bill looks to have the potential to resolve the current mess.

Meanwhile, to my pleasant surprise, the Libs have joined the NDP in calling for an open data policy. There's a ways to go for both parties in translating that goal into practice (both through legislation and a philosophical change in government), but the odds of it becoming a reality have to be better if the Libs' braintrust doesn't plan to fight the party's supporters on the need for transparency.

On live issues

It's undoubtedly for the best that Munir Sheikh has offered a suggestion to save the long-form census. But the most crucial point is one that I've made before:

I urge the government to rethink its position on the census. We still have time to reverse the decision. One option – and the government would need to consult Statistics Canada on this – would be to send the long-form questions for printing as scheduled. If the decision is reversed in the weeks following debate and analysis, one could simply put the short form and the long form in one envelope for the 20-per-cent sample with a letter from the chief statistician highlighting the mandatory nature of both, at the time the census process begins. If the voluntary survey decision stands after a careful rethink, a letter from the chief statistician could simply confirm the voluntary nature of the long form, sent separately from the short forms as currently planned.

Of course, the Cons have done everything in their power to present the decision as final and irreversible. And it probably isn't by accident that Stephen Harper's first emission of his party's talking points coincided with both the artificial deadline for material to "go to the printers", and an all-out proxy assault on continued coverage of the census.

But the reality is that there's no reason for either the groups who rely on long-form census data or the media to let up just because the Cons think they're entitled to decree an end to any consequences for their choices. And the sooner the Cons learn that they can't simply declare the issue closed, the more likely they'll be to reverse course.

Update: I'm sure the Cons will ignore Frank Graves' take. But he's absolutely right that they really only have two choices, and barging ahead with the elimination of the long form census without paying a political price isn't one of them:

Mr. Graves added that the government now has a choice: continue to be “battered” by its unpopular decision on the census or “flip flop on the basis of poor polls.”

The retreat begins?

We'll see how long the Cons stick with Tony Clement's latest census spin before moving on to another set of poor excuses. But it looks like they may be laying the groundwork to backtrack by (however implausibly) blaming Statistics Canada:

Industry Minister Tony Clement says Statistics Canada staff never told him it was a bad idea to make the long-form census voluntary.

In an interview with QMI Agency Friday, Clement said he couldn't say anything about the advice of Statistics Canada staff because advice to cabinet ministers is considered secret.

Media reports have said Statistics Canada staff oppose the change.

The department was due to have a meeting for all staff on Wednesday when chief statistician Munir Sheikh cancelled it at the last minute. He quit later that night, saying in a statement that a voluntary census can't replace a mandatory one.

But when asked about Statistics Canada opposition to the voluntary survey, Clement was terse.

“That is not what they said to me. I think I'll stand on my answer that they gave us options and we chose one of those options,” he said.

Of course, Clement's claim that he can't tell the truth about what advice he asked for and received from Statistics Canada is patently false. But if the Cons stick to the line that "they never told us there might be problems!", that would seem to both undermine their ability to stick with a decision made in the absence of essential information, and provide a convenient excuse to reverse it while casting blame elsewhere.

Mind you, Clement already seems to be spinning back away from the report. But the Cons may want to take another look at the easiest way out of an issue that obviously isn't going away otherwise.

Update: pogge reaches exactly the opposite conclusion based on the Cons' insistence on hiding the advice they received from Statistics Canada.

Called out

It hasn't gone unnoticed that Munir Sheikh's resignation letter as Chief Statistician in the wake of the Cons' census fiasco is chock full of noteworthy jabs. But perhaps not surprisingly, my personal favourite is one which applies far beyond his own personal circumstances:

There has also been commentary on the advice that Statistics Canada and I gave the government on this subject.

I cannot reveal and comment on this advice because this information is protected under the law. However, the government can make this information public if it so wishes.

Of course, the most immediate question is that of what Tony Clement has to hide when it comes to the advice provided by Sheikh. But there's no lack of other issues where the Cons have similarly used cabinet confidences as an excuse to avoid accountability - and Sheikh's letter is no less relevant to those cases as well in making clear that the Cons' compulsive secrecy is entirely self-imposed.