So are you saying that we have too many levels of government as opposed to levels of taxpayer?
No, I was saying that for the purposes of one census, that serves users from the federal level all the way down to the municipal level, it's not an easy task to pull all of that information together, as JLM seems to think.
I think it's perfectly prudent to have levels of government who are charged with maintaining such things as a military, and sewer systems. Ottawa and Charlottetown, in my case have very different responsibilities, and I think that's wise. Don't you?
How many people actually believe that your personal information is kept confidential?
Well, I do, for one. But then I have used actual data compiled by Stats Canada, in one of my stats courses while I was in university. And I will also note for the record, there is not a single record of third party users of Stats Canada data having access to any kind of data which could identify the individual. Not one.
So the analogy here is, even though you haven't shot anyone with a gun ( I assume), we should just say that you can't own a gun, ever, so that you don't use it maliciously.
I don't have that kind of faith in government employees.
I don't have faith that elected governments will be able to adequately gauge the financial needs of the programs they already have the responsibility to administer without good data, data the census currently provides.
How do they know that anyone forced to fill out a survey is telling the truth? At least with a voluntary one most people that take the time to fill it out would not lie.
They have people who follow up with the respondents for a reason... Can you cite any statistical or econometric references that find the veracity of voluntary surveys to be superior to mandatory surveys?
