CalgaryLiberal

You need facts to make decisions, Mr. Harper.

And to attain facts you must acquire them, search for them, and research them.

Turfing the long form of the census and making it voluntary removes facts from the public, the policy maker, and the politicians, making decisions irreverent of facts and making decisions ill-fitted to the problems of the day.

How does it remove facts? By allowing self-selection to impinge on the results of such surveys. It makes the data irrelevant and a waste of money. Mr. Fellegi, retired senior bureaucrat with more than a half century of public work beneath his belt, puts it this way:

“It would have been a heck of a lot better if this long-form census was cancelled because at least we would have saved $100 million — that would have had a rationale,” Fellegi said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“To come out with something (voluntary) that has uncertain quality, and certainly for some groups it will be unpublishable quality, is not something that I can understand.”van Fellegi, a veteran public servant who spent 51 years at Statistics Canada before retiring in 2008, says he’s alarmed by the decision to replace the long census form with a voluntary survey next year.

He joins a chorus of groups, including the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Canadian Council on Social Development and others who rely on the detailed data to make major public policy decisions.

Considering the ideological bent of the Conservative Party it is unsurprising they’re ditching the facts in favour of, well, nothing. It helps them govern in that they’re not bound by ‘silly’ things like reality or of facts. It’s a tactical decision meant to undermine the ability of Canadians to benefit from good policy and good decisons–and is a policy to service Conservative reality-ditching.

If you don’t have the facts in front of you to make decisions then all you have are blowhards yelling at the top of their lungs. Everyone becomes a Baird.

The Conservative party, over its few years in government, has been undermining the ability of the parliament to make fact based decisions, to allow bureaucracy to utilize their institutional knowledge, and to create a pandemic of fear in the hearts and minds of those in Ottawa. Intimidating the diplomat, Mr. Colvin, intimidating multitudes of climate change scientists receiving funding from the government, telling women groups to “shut the fuck up,” installing Message Event Proposals shutting down any form of free thought outside the PMO, ending the ability of reporters to actually ask the PMO tough questions… Killing off the ability of municipalities and parliament to make fact based decisions with the census is only the next, obvious step of Harper’s government.

There is a sickness in Ottawa. And this sickness is Harper. He’s undermining fact-based policy and the very structural, traditional openness of the Canadian state.

What others are saying:

• Winnipeg Free Press highlights the census scandal
• CalgaryGrit gives clear, quick, and precise reason why what Harper is doing is bad.
• RICHARD SHEARMUR writes to the Montreal Gazette

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