So, apparently in 2011, the long-form will not be mandatory. Previously, the form was sent to approximately a fifth of Canadian households of which the response was mandatory. Now it will be replaced by more forms, only the response will be voluntary.
This is not good news.
Some might find this a trivial technical matter, but it's really not. Having access to good population information is critical for legislators, and having good access to bad information makes it far easier for governments to manipulate the information we do have.
It's well known in sampling literature that people with low income and lower education have lower response rates than those with higher income and higher education. So making it voluntary to fill out the census is perverse, in that the lower income/educated citizens will be systematically under-sampled, and when law makers craft new legislation, when R&D considers market trends, when NGO's analyze planned policies, the impact in that segment of society will be unknown. Or rather, the result won't be an accurate appraisal of what will happen.
Consider this, the census is the only data Canadians have access to on aboriginal academic achievement. How will we be able to make objective assessments of policy alternatives?
All sample surveys that are not mandatory have bias, but it can be corrected, if you know what the true population distribution is. When you have a complete census, you know what the distribution is. So it's really shooting Statistics Canada in the foot by hamstringing what data they have.
This really is an assault on democracy, but because of the poor statistical/mathematical understanding of Canadians, this won't get turned into the issue that it needs to be. At least not by Joe and Jane Public.
The government tries to frame this issue by relating it to privacy concerns. The truth is, that the researchers who use this data never see it. They send their estimation codes to StatsCan, just like the recent HST model simulations in BC. StatsCan just runs the inputs the researchers are interested in, and gives them the results. At no time would anyone see the actual data, except for the professionals at StatsCan.
Basically, the census form is no more an invasion of privacy than is filing a tax return. Anyone who has dealt with StatsCan knows that they are compulsively obsessive about protecting this information. It's almost annoying how protective they can be.
If you still think this is not a big issue, consider this. Canada has a well-known productivity gap. I've yet to read of a single economist that doesn't think that Canada needs to make improvements that address the knowledge sector of our economy. That is where countries with good productivity are making those gains. If we don't have good population data, we don't have good access to good data, and we make it more difficult for:
-Investors
-Marketing
-Policy makers
-Academics
So basically everyone involved in the knowledge economy.
This decision was obviously made without consultation from the relevant stakeholders in the Canadian public. It also represents further movement towards secrecy in Ottawa, despite pontification to the likewise.
This was actually tried before, by Brian Mulroney. The backlash from the business community was severe. That put the kibosh to that plan. Let's hope that good sense prevails again.
I disagree.
Keep in mind that all the Conservatives want to do is decriminalize the Federal census.
It is a purely Libertarian move.
The census itself remains the same.
Why on earth should we use the authorities to harass and threaten our citizens over a census.
At tax payer expense no less.
And a very, very important point to be made here is future governments can include or delete any questions they see fit.
That means any future Federal governments be they Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green or whatever the future holds politically can rejig the questions.
And then what; fine or incarcerate our citizens for failing to answer possibly offensive or improper questions?
Again lets keep in mind the census and all mandatory completion enforcement costs are at tax payers expense.
For what, good data?
For whom?
Since my wife works at a reasonably high level within the research university system and also happens to be a registered Federal lobbyist I have seen some of the letters the research Universities are firing off to the Federal Government.
Which is no big deal, it's all public knowledge.
Its all pretty much along the same lines as Tonington's posts except more factually accurate.
The Uni's of course have a huge vested interest.
Research at Canadian Universities is Federally funded.
Except for the funding they receive when they get in bed with the private sector.
So all that census data (collected at taxpayers expense) flows to the research universities who either discover something and then patent it or sell the data or the research to the private sector.
So the Federal government is using taxpayer moneys to collect census data at gunpoint.
They then sell off the data to the private sector for a profit or give the data to research groups who then sell anything discovered of value to the private sector.
In effect your taxes are being used to enforce data collection which could then be used to create a more potent cigarette or a more marketable haemorrhoid cream.
Now lets talk about the indigenous peoples.
The old if we don't have an enforceable census then they become underrepresented.
I really don't buy that.
I think its a flawed and erroneous argument.
We make them criminals for not answering a census?
Have the authorities harass them for not completing it to their satisfaction?
Then what, incarcerate them?
Its the old "we have to kill them to save them" logic.
Poor people, uneducated people and indigenous peoples have the right to free will.
If they don't want to answer the Fed's intrusive questions then more power to them.
In WW2 the Nazis used the census data in Germany and Austria to locate and round up Poles, Slavs, Jews and Gypsies(Romanians).
Then they killed them.
Then they went through the census data to try and search out the mentally handicapped or the physically disabled with an inheritable trait.
Then they sterilized them.
Or killed them.
As soon as the Nazi's invaded a country the SS went straight for the local census data.
People then got rounded up and loaded on trains.
Lots and lots of people.
Back home in Canada the authorities went straight to the census data to round up the Japanese-Canadians and the German-Canadians.
Off to the internment camps they went.
Down south the Americans did the same thing.
Built the camps and then hit the census data.
So its pretty well established how handy accurate census data can be.
Next up to bat are the countries who have decided to get rid of mandatory (enforceable) census data.
Norway (highest GDP/PP in the world), Sweden( that hotbed of rightwing control freaks), Denmark( rated the happiest country in the world) and Iceland (the greatest density of fantastically hot chicks on the planet) have all punted the mandatory census.
They feel its both invasive and intrusive.
France, Germany and the UK are all at present debating getting rid of the mandatory census.
Pretty much everyone agrees the harassment and enforcement issues do not justify the results.
And just how good is the data anyway?
In this day and age of RIFID's and data tracking every time you make a purchase without using cash.
All your insurance data, your tax data, your health information and your every purchase is sold to the highest bidder and collated and massaged daily.
Census data is however generally considered "stale" data.
Quite often the census data is just to dated to be very useful in this age of mobility,daily surveys and internet marketing.
I really don't care if the Fed's are going to pimp out my census data to heave into the great data collection pot.
But to make my tax dollars pay for it?
And then to enforce mandatory compliance, again at tax payers expense?
Trex
