Mediacheck

A Stats Geek Fears We'll Lose Sight of Who We Are

Tell your government we need Statistics Canada information.

By Frances Bula, 9 Jul 2010, TheTyee.ca

Census form comic

Cartoon by Ingrid Rice.

Text size:

Rate this:

Login/Register

Related

As my faithful readers know, I'm a reasonable person who's always willing to consider all sides of an issue, sometimes to a fault, and I rarely get foot-stomping angry over anything.

But if there's one thing that does raise my blood pressure, it's governments who make it difficult to get information. Usually that's confined to unhelpfully funneling everything through a "communications officer" who knows nothing or making you put in a freedom-of-information request to get the simplest report or number.

This time, though, the problem is a move to reduce the amount of information available by limiting Statistics Canada's activities. As my friend Andre Picard points out in the Globe, that is a serious blow to our ability to understand who we are as a nation, what we're doing collectively, and how to plan for the future.

Statistics are powerful

I freely acknowledge that I'm a statistics geek whose fondest dream has been to fill out the census long form. But even if you don't put yourself in that category, the kind of information that StatsCan gathers through the long form and other types of data-gathering currently under threat are vital.

In the complex society we live in, I see statistics gathering as the higher-order brain function of the national body we live in. If we don't get that feedback to the brain about what is happening in all the various regions of the body, we can't react to early signs of danger.

At Vancouver's city hall, people are concerned about it too. When planners figure out the future density needed for a neighbourhood, they look at existing demographics and immigration information and project them forward. Transportation planners rely on the regular statistical information about who is walking, biking, taking the bus, driving alone, or driving with someone to see how patterns are changing ... or not.

Another form of 'downloading'

Vancouver Coun. Raymond Louie told me this week (while we were talking about other things) that he's going to be bringing a motion forward to have staff come up with a list of all the kinds of statistics they use for planning and what they might have to do to continue to get that information, i.e. collect it themselves.

He's worried that this will end up being just another form of downloading, as cities have to spend more money to get essential information about activities inside their boundaries.

I imagine this is something that will be unquestioningly supported by all parties, as it should be. This isn't a partisan issue. I encourage all of you to register protests with your local MPs or the PMO's office directly about this. [Tyee]

Veteran journalist Frances Bula writes for the Globe and Mail, Vancouver Magazine and State of Vancouver, her own widely read blog on municipal politics where this first appeared.

6 Comments:

Login or register to post comments

  • rubiconchase

    1 year ago

    The Harpercon Census

    Breaking News/ Canadian Gov't revising census distribution logistics. New census will be disseminated by one paperboy within weekly flyers to a small suburb of Calgary. PMO cites massive cost savings as primary reason for shift.

    Our national government doesn't want to know about or diversity. They want to live in that bubble that allows them to think that they represent 'most Canadians'. The truth just gets in the way of that.

  • Curious Guy

    1 year ago

    Stats Canada Census

    I'm glad you wrote about this Frances. It would be bad news if the Canadian Census goes the way of the recent USA census.

    The Bush adminstration delayed appointing a head to the adminsistration overseeing the census and then refused ot pass a budget. The amount of time available for planning for the census was compromised by delays. The eventual census undertaken had a total 10 question on it. There was one question on housing: do you own or rent. One question. What kind of housing policy and program development can be undertaken with the lack of information. The private sector uses census infomation as well.

    We need information, for governments, non-profits and foundations and private industry to make investment decisions and to develop policy and undertaken program reviews.

    If there is an essential area for government's it is to invest in raw data about who we are and trends on how we are changing.

  • Dahlia

    1 year ago

    No Info

    Maybe that's the purppose: no one knows anything about anything. Or anyone. Except, of course the police and secret services know more than anyone, especially about everyone's movement: we're all on camera these days.

    In my youth a senior professor of Landscape Architecture told me that every intelligent persons is a planner. These days we don't want to plan, after all private enterprise will do it better. All we need to do is get out of the way, rght?

  • jcaputa

    1 year ago

    A win for personal freedoms

    While this may makes collecting statistics more of a challenge for governments, it certainly is a win in terms of personal freedoms. Canadians shouldn't be forced to participate in the census, but rather complete it out of a sense of civic duty. There's good reasons not to fill out the census; for example, the fact that the previous census data was compiled by Lockheed Martin (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2242).

    It's quite unfortunate and unfair that those that chose not to participate in the 2006 census due to this reason are currently being prosecuted (http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/235930229-updates-on-census-court-cases).

    So to me, this step by the conservative government is one of the very few positive things they've done. The census should be optional.

  • dorothy

    1 year ago

    The crux of the matter

    I really didn't think (but of course that was naive) that this was rocket science! But it seems to be. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, benign or considerate of anyone, about this step by our governemt. This is the next move towards the complete dismantling of every last vestige of community, on which this regime is Hel-bent. I have little patience with those who cannot figure out that one cannot be in and out at the same time. Their shortsighted and ill-advised grumping about anyone knowing stuff about them (grow up!) has made it possible for our self-serving government to render everyone blind, dumb and deaf and, most importantly, ignorant of our own turf and who our neighbours are. Good job. These grievors have done more to lose the greater freedom for everyone that knowledge is, due to the the little illusion of freedom they absolutely had to have, than the most underhanded subversive activists could have accomplished in a long, long time. Where do I emigrate to next? Where do people still have some backbone and guts, as well as some will to give and not just receive and gripe?

  • djsw

    1 year ago

    Garbage

    I've never filled out a census, never will. If there is to be a census the only questions that need to be asked are

    How old are you?
    What gender are you?

    That's it, nobody needs to know how many Marty's live in Canada, or how many people are black, or how many people rent, or how many people are gay, no, sorry. We are talking about a government that used the census to help them inter Japanese and German Canadians during the second world war. You people need to take your heads out of the sand and understand that no government is benevolent, got it?

    • The discussion for this story is closed. No more comments can be added.