• CalgaryGrit explains the issue of the Conservative led census changes quite succinctly.
• Globe and Mail really hammers Clement and friends hard, and finishes with a poll.
• The National Post also holds Harper’s feet to the fire.
• Former StatsCanada Chief said he would resign if the census was treated this way under his term. Current Stats Canada chief, Sheikh, just did (with his original letter being removed by the Conservatives from the StatsCan website).
• Conservative stalwart, the newspaper Calgary Herald, is equally critical as the National Post and Globe, if not more so.
• I wrote a blog post  almost three weeks ago about this topic. It’s nice to see that the talk on the topic has increased several fold.

The consensus on the census change is unanimous. Changing the census, a mandatory form sent out to a fifth of Canadians, to a voluntary form to be sent out to millions more at a cost of tens of millions more, is bad. Not only is it fiscal maltreatment of Canadian tax payers’ monies it’s bad science.

It’s bad science because a larger universe of data (more Canadians) does not fix the biases created by non-random, non-selected survey. We’d get an overabundance of WASPs filling out the forms and a shortage on those who need to be counted: unemployed, poor folks, minorities, English as a second language, and many, many others. The Clement change would devastate the basic requirements for a scientific, fact based tool for municipal, provincial, federal, non-profit, and scholarly decision makers.

So it’s bad. Very bad. It’s bad for measuring things and bad for basing decisions off of those measurements.

And Clement‘s and Harper‘s reasoning?

It’s to protect privacy. Which, of course, is complete bovine struccus.

Over the last decade privacy complaints to Statistics Canada has numbered only three. 3. Privacy commissioners were also not contacted or consulted by Harper or Clement on the topic of changing the census. Concern over Stats Canada spilling details is equally moot.

The Lockheed Martin conspiracy theory (which can be found at www.CountMeOut.ca) is also daft. The Globe explains why.

There are individuals and groups who object to the census for a variety of reasons. One peace activist in Saskatchewan refuses to do it because Statistics Canada buys computer programs from Lockheed Martin, an arms maker. There are those who harbour paranoid Big Brother fears; but anyone who has dealt with Statscan knows that its obsesses about privacy to a fault. (Individual census information is not available until 92 years later, and even then it is difficult to gain access to.)

Then, of course, is the large fear of a single person’s data being sent off to some Machiavellian mastermind bent on harming that single person–which is also bunk. The information collected by Statistics Canada is gathered, thrown into a metaphorical tub of numbers, sloshed around, standardized, normalized, and eventually brought to to become trends, indices, and standardized graphs. There is no outpouring of information on Joe Smith or Jane Dane–it’s blanket data on trends in Canada.

I’m pretty sure Harper and Clement aren’t in bed with conspiracy theories (or, at least, I’d hope they’re not) and privacy isn’t a concern, either. Public policy, fiscal restraint, or any other thought is also illogical reasons when compared to their actions and their defense.

From what I can understand, and this is only my gut feeling, the decision was brought on by three points:

• The Conservatives need to give conservatives a reason to vote for them in the next election hat could be this fall. As of right now the Conservatives have peeved off the social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and majority-seeking Conservative politicos for various reasons, some being the largest deficit in Canadian history to being weak on domestic abortion issues. Harper, in this line of thought, needs to shore up his base which, on the whole, is against government intrusion in their homes and lives.
• Most Canadians don’t care. The politicos care, the reporters care (they always do when someone seems like they care–it pays the bills and all that), the politicians care, the policy planners care, the scholars care, the statistics people care, the economists care… But these people are in the minority. They’re off to the side and minuscule in comparison to the general Canadian electorate. It’s also a connection thing for this point: Canadians can connect with the statement of “Those dirty Liberals want to count your bathrooms for no purpose” but be able to connect not any statistical hobbliegoop about calculating wealth and diversity between regions. This makes it easy politics to skip over the heads of a majority Canadians and not politically disadvantageous to do so while, at the same time, enjoying the political benefit of doing the census change. This means that Conservatives can tell their base (note point one above) while avoiding general repercussions in an election. The substantial indifference can be clearly seen in the latest EKOS poll with regards to voter intention. The Ottawa Sun captures to 50/50 split of Canadian opinion quite well, which tends to be the norm in things that people don’t care about.
• Distract politicos and Canadians from two topics: the $16billion bill for F-35 jets and Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal Express.

Well, for all intents and purposes the third point has done fairly well. Since only the hardcore politicos and ‘elites’ (at least according to the Toronto Sun) are paying attention, the non-Conservative politicos will froth at the mouth while Conservatives (and conservatives underneath Harper’s wing) will be quite happy with their ideological victory. While the Conservatives will be jubilant, however, the energy wasted on a non-vote getter by the Liberals and others will just grind effort that could be put elsewhere push things into nowhere.