I agree RickW

I don't support the FI (Frickkin Idiots) either but when the Cencus takers arrive I will boycott sections of it. I am a left wing WASA (White Anglo Sacon Athiest) and I'm proud of it but it's not the governments business to know that.

Watch who you call 'libertarian'

Not all libertarians support the cancellation of the long-form census. Not all libertarians are far-righters. Among libertarians are those who don't view individual freedom to be necessarily in conflict with the collective pursuit of individual goals, be that through truly democratic, transparent government or other free assembly.

Please beware of throwing the label 'libertarian' around, as though we're all painted royal blue. At least provide a qualification of your usage at the outset of your article.

good article

Corporate capitalism and their think tanks have been aggressively trying to sabotage socially progressive cultures for more than 50 years now. Corporations don't want citizens they want debt-slaves. And now they're trying to get control of our water & food systems and the internet.

And our societies are crumbling under this onslaught of privatization and the "race to the bottom".

The 1st 4 comments says it

The 1st 4 comments says it how I feel on this topic.

Isn't this a shot to their foot...?

I can't help but think that the supposed credibility of the FI is bound up in their ability to use non-private sector data for their so-called 'studies' (read 'evidence supporting forgone conclusions' ;-)

Without public-sector data provided by groups like StatsCan, or school boards (e.g. FSA tests), their own ability to spin is tainted.

Research??

I have to agree with the author. The Fraser Institute cloaks its lobbying under the guise of "Research" which unfortunately is dispensed as fact by members of the media who know that information is consumed in 5 second soundbites by an extremely busy and increasingly disoriented and disillusioned citizenry. Refreshing to read something that questions this and the purpose behind it.

Maybe this is the place

To bring in the information regarding that argument I have seen of late, namely that 'Denmark does not use any census and hasn't for many years', and just see how organized they all are.

This is true. But Denmark does not need to conduct a census, because it keeps tabs on its inhabitants in ways that Canadians can hardly imagine. In Denmark, public service agencies do not ask for permission to share information with each other. They have for decades been doing this as a matter of course. This is known as the infamous 'cross-auditing' and is something Danes have always complained bitterly about since its inception. The idea is to catch people in welfare fraud, tax evasion and such stuff, but it also serves to bite one in the derriere in unexpected ways. For instance, one may have painted one's circumstances as black as one could without outright lying in order to better qualify for social assistance at some point, only to see, years later, when one's life has turned around for the better, that this darkly painted picture is trotted out, say for instance when one is trying to adopt a child, and is then used against one. This kind of keeping tabs is normally something you can only do here to people suspected of criminal acts.

Also one cannot 'disappear off the radar' in Denmark. On leaving a city to move to another, one must obtain a certificate at city hall, and then at one's destination, file this paper at city hall there in order to retain municipal rights and entitlements.

This all seems very orderly and regulated, and if it runs to one's taste, Denmark may still accept immigrants, but that is why Denmark does not need to conduct any census. 'They' already know it all...

I am appalled at people's petty griping about the Census here. I think we should remember why it is needed and that it is only a snapshot, and that the alternative may very well be that you can't even opt out and take the fine or whatever, 'cause it's all done without even asking.

Thanks Cocean!

Thanks for pointing out the necessity of not misusing the word "libertarian" The word was first used in the 1850s as a synonym for anarchism. The Fraser Institute is actually about as libertarian as Gen Pinochet, who is undoubtedly one of their heroes.

As for Libertarian ...

Ask 50 Libertarians to define and explicate what a Libertarian is, and you will get 50 wildly different, usually contradictory definitions.

All of them, however, tend to share a certain lack of awareness of the realities of how real human beings interact with each other in the real (as opposed to theoretical and/or ideological) world.

Excellent, but unfortunately only half baked

Several correctives:

1. Without repeating, I applaud all of the comments made pertaining to mislabelling the Fraser Institute as Libertarian. The comment showing up the Fraser Institute's own hypocritical stance and absolute need to rely on "non-private sector data" in order for them to even raise and promote their twisted solutions is excellent and is worthy of repetition until more widely understood.

2. The author's own use of attributing that elusive "majority government" that Harper is seeking ought more correctly be shown for what it is, a phony majority government, like too many before where the ruling dictator has significantly less than 50% support of voters, but thanks to the single-mark ballot which is vulnerable to vote-splitting, can be rewarded with the majority of seats. These vote-split results can be mitigated, even eliminated one local MP at a time by any community prepared to do the self-rule work of a voluntary community poll to find the true two best candidates as outline at
http://www.eduardhiebert.com/ereform/v123p.htm

3. Repeating lies does not make it so, though more people will tend to believe so. The long form, contrary to widespread media repetition of this claim is not correct. Please see the Statistic Act sections 8 and 19 to interpret 8 correctly at
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/about-apercu/act-loi-eng.htm

Furthermore Tony Clement has also confirmed and stated this when he said "The Long Form Census is not legislated to be mandatory." For context please see http://cdndailydigest.blogspot.com under Daily Digest July 9, 2010

Eduard

The cartoon is great

You have to give the institute that as the organization is not to shabby when it comes to talent.
However, I do believe the its whole lot one sided as Canada has a long more on it's plate as what next oil sands delivery by air?
And Dorthy good point about info sharing and Government is already sharing the info in cases of welfare and such but there is a lot more information out there that is needed to help agencies helping others better make decisions and the list goes on.
Its not information government is prepared to share and what information was available will be even harder to access I'm certain.
I also question government's motive in it decision to scrape list as Harper has no problem locking Canadians up as G20 and billions going into prisons, the profit kind tells me different.

At the very least it is confusing

I can remember my first form and being told I must fill out the form and that it was necessary for government to make decisons and the form also aided others in decision making.
I also understood that the informatioin wasn't 100% but was sufficient to help make decisions and have used it in the past and now I am told it is up to me knowing with that bit of information many will pass. So it confusing because for years I was told it was essential and now I am told it is not.

dorothy

And I suspect we do the same here -- except in a surreptitious, sleazy kind of way. The "saving grace" though with Canada, is that they "haven't got it right" -- yet, obsessed as the petty bureaucrats are with their own little fiefdoms.

phony privacy concerns

The identifying marks attached to any and all census data do NOT travel with the data itself. Raw census information is embargoed for 92 years - consequently, the raw data for census 1911 is the latest one which is open to public scrutiny.

The concern about anything submitted on a census form is phony - unless one is something more than 90 years old - as long as the census is done properly and professionally by dedicated and independent civil servants.

Unfortunately, this phony kerfuffle is, as Gutstein suggests, simply a way for Pee Wee to play to his fundamentalist base...

How many bathrooms do you have?

What time di you leave for work today?

Do you eat snack foods?

Do we Canadians really need to finance a national survey to provide businesses with data so they can shove more products at us?

realisticman

Mor apt if it reads:
"Do we Canadians really need to finance a national survey to provide businesses with data so they can continue to shove more products at us?"

Libertarian order is a mirage

You can't have markets without a government first setting and enforcing ground rules. Only after that will markets thrive. A libertarian order is a mirage. No one would opt to enforce the law and risk their lives in a libertarian order. Chaos would reign.

Long form, please

When the time comes, I will demand that I be given the long form to fill out. If thousands of us did this, it would kind of screw up FI and Harper's plan.

realistic man and rick w

I am not sure why so many bathrooms in a house is a piece of valuable data but the snack food question may be of interest to more than just food corporations that make food that make people unhealthy.

Health researchers and policy advisers also use this information to provide policy makers with information that may encourage them to enact legislation to reduce or eliminate things like trans fats and perhaps even the high level of salt some snack foods contain. It is easy to make a case for government intervention when one can determine whether or not Canadians are increasing their consumption of snack (junk) foods.

Does liberty mean one can become unhealthy and make the rest of society pay for the healthcare costs caused by snack food consumption?

My problem with the long form is that only 20% of the population gets to participate. I would like to see all of us having to answer some of the questions that only those who get the long form get to answer. For instance, please provide the postal code of your place of employment or location of the post secondary institution you attend.

Justifying multi-billion dollar transportation initiatives without this more complete information makes for poor public investment and using only 20% of an urban population's data can lead to a poor or limited understanding of just where people travel to work or to school these days in our metro region.

Other questions that lead to a better understanding of public services would help both policy analysts and governments make better choices. Or so one would hope.

I always thought libertarians or those who pretend to be conservatives want government to use their tax dollars more effectively.

But as the article points out, the arguments to exclude mandatory long form census participation is part of a strategy to get us to believe something is wrong with good information and statistics. After all, neo-con governments avoid logic, data and intelligence in their policy decisions. The key lexicon in a neo-conservative's playbook these days is "Believe Me", something more fitting for someone gambling or playing a rube's game on the midway. A bunch of carnies, the lot of them.

who chooses the questions on the long form?

Does anyone know the process for having a particular question included on the long form? Would be interesting to understand that process and perhaps get questions Canadians may find more appropriate.

Who is In Charge???

Is this really about the value of the mandatory long form census versus whatever form the Tories are planning on using, or is it about one huge agency trying to protect its turf??
Civil servants, many of who are not civil, and most are certainly not servants are actually the ones who really run things make no mistake about it. Politicians come and go, but those guys are there forever and they want to make sure their kingdoms are as large as possible.

pwlg

"Health researchers and policy advisers also use this information to provide policy makers with information that may encourage them to enact legislation to reduce or eliminate things like trans fats and perhaps even the high level of salt some snack foods contain. It is easy to make a case for government intervention when one can determine whether or not Canadians are increasing their consumption of snack (junk) foods."

Snack food companies issue annual reports clearly stating their production and sales figures. If you want to finance a consumption survey to assist, for example, Frito-Lay, the maker of chips ($12 billion annual sales) and help them with their recipes you are one of a small minority and please deal me out. I don't need good junk food and I don't need any government financed study to help corporations make healthy junk food to sell me because I know that junk food is junk food.

As for the transportation studies, well, just listen to the traffic reports on the radio and all you need to know is there.

Stockboy Day says the long

Stockboy Day says the long form is against the constitution and the bill of rights. If Stockewell is against it, most of us will be supporting the long form. Heck I got one last year and had no problem filling it in

Ignorance

Those who attack the information gathering and collation efforts of Statistics Canada and its professionals reveal an attitude that has come to characterize an unfortunately growing segment of the Canadian population.

For business?

r'man makes an interesting point, why should we provide data for business?

What the census is needed for is for government to set up programs in the right areas. The data should stay within government and business can pay people to respond to surveys of their own.

data and advertising

"Do we Canadians really need to finance a national survey to provide businesses with data so they can shove more products at us?"

It can have the opposite effect. Companies have no interest in wasting their money targeting advertising to people who have no interest in their products. Frankly, I wish Shaw TV knew I haven't had cable TV in over a decade. Maybe they'd stop sending me junk mail trying to get me to buy a cable hook-up.

G West re: Ignorance

"Those who attack the information gathering and collation efforts of Statistics Canada and its professionals reveal an attitude that has come to characterize an unfortunately growing segment of the Canadian population."

How so?

It is easy to conclude that sometimes the government is legitimately trying to look after the people yet, at other times, the government's objective is to exploit these same people for its own gain. And we, the people, are suppose to determine for ourselves when we should be most cooperative and when we should not based on ...?

For What It's Worth,

I believe the public needs access to a census that is non-partisan in nature (in which instance it needs to ask seemingly irrelevant questions) because any organisation other than government can produce its own "census" slanted to make its own particular point. The FI would certainly be able to promote its so-called libertarian pov without any legitimate opposition figures.

Consequently, all government census information should be freely available, which would certainly rub the FI noses in the facts and irritate them no end because the information was (shudder) "free." The more often that truthful information is available, the less often the public can be conned into believing that snake oil is efficacious linament.

Those who want to keep certain information secret for the sake of "privacy" must have something to hide. At least, that's the impression that logic dictates.

elephant sitting on Mr Gutstein?

- he says think tanks like the Fraser play "..the key role in altering the climate of opinion.." - I am afraid I must disagree, loudly. I have little use for what the Fraser gets up to, although there's a certain value in knowing what 'the enemy' is up to, and they issue regular newsletters and reports telling us what they are planning, but it is the mainstream media which is the major driver of forming the general 'climate of opinion' - it is in the mainstream media the propaganda is first disseminated, and then reinforced day after day after day. The dissemination is both overt and subtle, but every citizen is immersed in a never-ending 24/7 monologue of the vision of society wished by those who rule us - the wealthy elite. The rightwingers have their National Post, Sun media, Globe and etc, and those of us who consider ourselves somewhat more progressive get the Star and CBC and maybe some others, but they all carry the same essential messages - at this time in the march of the creation of Brave New World, for instance, we get endless stories about how governments are in trouble, and we all must prepare for new austerity measures - all lies (explained here - What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html ), but the message is as strong and endless on the CBC as it is in the NP. The NP et al and the CBC et al all tell us at every opportunity what a noble thing we are doing in Afghanistan. And etc etc - and minor differences in coverage are, in terms of the overall shaping of society, more or less irrelevant, and exist only as more opportunities for the classical, but very effective, divide and conquer method of controlling people. Look at the political coverage the last few years - Harper et al are given more or less a free ride, whilst the Liberals are viciously slandered at every opportunity - they destroyed Dion like this, and now Ignatieff - whilst Harper gets 'feel good' photos like the one of him playing the Beatles at the National Arts center - all subtle ways of pushing public opinion, when carried out systematically. Sure Canadians disagreeing with what the Cons are doing get coverage, but there are no personal attacks of Harper such as there are, day after day, on Ignatieff. (a longer analysis of this here - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html .)

Swaying the "facts"

I'm glad people here will go out of their way to complete the long form, but this misses the point. In 2006 I was an enumerator in the Downtown Eastside, where no households were mailed the form but were instead all approached door-to-door, in an effort to get more participation (which worked well). Every fifth household got the long form. With some exceptions, folks were generally fine with taking the time for the long form. But I can't think of anyone out of the thousands I spoke with who asked for one.

I guarantee you that almost nobody in the DTES is likely to fill out a long form voluntarily; for many people, their lives are built around basic survival, and filling out a form gets in the way of that. So the FI and its government will have people like themselves filling out the long form, virtually no poor people doing so, and voila! we have no problems with poverty, lack of services, etc. And I can see the FI types crowing that it serves those people right, no form and they don't exist.

I'm appalled and I realize I shouldn't be surprised.

... simple is as simple does...

The other morning, as I listened to the representative from the Fraser Institute attempt to explain the case for doing away with the long form census I thought, what a perfectly symbolic act. Steven Harper maintains his 30 to 35% share of the public support because a lot of people are overwhelmed with the complexity and pace of change in modern life. They want predictable, they want safe. Above all they want simple. What better way to deliver simple than with incomplete information?

The undeniable power of the conservative ideology is its ability to reduce the complex and challenging world to simple concepts. Us versus them, good guys and bad guys, good or evil. The unfortunate thing is that these are wrong, or at least woefully incomplete pictures of reality.

Real life is nuanced, grey, messy, and getting more complex all the time - this I'd argue largely due to policies driven by gross oversimplifications in the past.

The folks who object to the intrusive gathering of personal information - I wonder how many of them give a second thought when they use their loyalty cards or charge personal purchases on their VISA. The difference is that with the census it's the "untrustworthy" government collecting the information, rather than the "benign" corporations.

A government that doesn't trust government. Is this what Canada really needs?

Aowwww

"Real life is nuanced, grey, messy, and getting more complex all the time - this I'd argue largely due to policies driven by gross oversimplifications in the past."

But what you say here is kind of hurtful, because it would require, if we were to see it and relate to it, that we might have to, er, hmmm, (shudder)
- GROW UP.

We have voluntary elections,

We have voluntary elections, and they work pretty well, don't they?

In response to Immigrant

I too live in DTES and agree that the long form would be a hard sell in these parts unless respondents were given a fin to fill it out.
But I think you're very wrong in assuming that they're significantly different from other neighbourhoods. Having lived in every region of the town over the past half century I would say the largest commonality we share is the perception that we are too busy to do much of anything without a reaasonably tangible form of recognition.
That's not to minimize the millions of hugely valuable volunteer hours put in by good citizens. Those folks are self-motivated towards what is important to them - and in the absence of a mandatory long form, it is quite a challenge to develop the link between a responsive attitude to filling out a government form and the benefits it may bring to people and issues that you care about.
I can see Harper waiting this one out, secure in the understanding that should this one establish his beach-head, the next one would be a faint issue and the next would be history, without regard to who is in power.
Another step in the very process that Donald spells out so well.
Thanks for the article.

As to elections, being voluntary.....

Perhaps THAT'S a problem too.

The suggestion that they currently (and largely in the past too) are working well - let alone 'pretty' well...nah! I think you may have some problem finding more than roughly 37% of the adult population who will agree with you on that conclusion my ursine friend.

propaganda

There's a difference between 'trying' to sway public opinion and actually doing so. Though insitutions like Fraser Institute or the COnservative Party can use all manner of policy and media manipulation to acheive their agenda, only time will tell if they succeed. In trying economic times such as the ones we are facing and will continue to face over the coming years, such attempts to co-opt pulbic agenda for special interest groups, in this case the power elite, become more fierce. However they can backfire by leading to the polarization of public opinion into opposing groups. In fact, since the Harper government has arrived in power, Canada has become increasingly divided in terms of political affiliations, while more and more citizens simply feel alienated or abandonned by Ottawa. The most obvious proof of that polarization is the near miss by the opposition parties to form a coalition government at the beginning of 2009. The way the Conservatives reacted, by proroguing parliament shows how tenuous there real control of power is. Personally I don't think this is the way the majority of Canadians like Canada to be governed, through using the media to try and manipulate pulbic opinion, while abusing government to maintain power. That's the way the USA works, NOT Canada!

We need the census information

Public interest researchers rely on census data and can't afford to conduct their own surveys to obtain the information. Corporations can, but it's in our collective interests to own the data rather than rely on private investors to "share" (something they won't and don't do). An example of how the census can help people fight for good public policy: studies using the data have shown that type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and obesity are distributed across the population unevenly, and that income is a determining factor. Poor people eat poorly - and this shows how stark that is. If you look at BC Stats, you can see that those on income assistance are distributed unevenly across the city of Vancouver - the west side averages about 0.3% while the downtown eastside averages about 7%. This kind of information shows what a screwed up society we live in and that we need policies to redistribute wealth more fairly and equitably.

The flip side to the census story, though, is that the Harper government is the most secretive government on record. They don't want to know about us and they sure don't want us to know about them.