At first I found it somewhat amusing that Canadians were getting worked up over the news that the Conservatives scrapped the mandatory long form census in favour of an elective version.
The vitriol and anger spewed at the Harper government for the move was such that one could easily have mistaken the news for something important. Say for instance, like the traffic report on the drive home from work.
That some people have so resoundingly rejected the idea of the government deciding not to force people to answer intrusive questions on a survey with jail time and fines, sounded to me like some kind of bizarre sitcom.
“How dare you give me the option as to whether I tell you what mode of transportation I use to get to work? I don’t believe I should have the right not to inform the government of every minute detail of my life. Restore the threats and coercion forthwith!”
Of course, it’s not as though anything else is in the news right now to compete with this utterly banal development. Which is why it’s not surprising that many people are misinformed about the belief that the long form census is being “scrapped”, when in fact it’s merely being replaced by a voluntary “national household survey.” This will be sent to one-third of all homes in Canada.
Not that I care.
Today the controversy came to a head, as the head of Statistics Canada, Munir Sheikh, resigned over the whole ordeal. In leaving his position, Mr.Sheikh said that he cannot accept the substitution of a voluntary survey for a mandatory census.
This has, for some curious reason, made him an instant hero and darling of the media, for resigning on “principle.” But principle of what, exactly?
It’s only his opinion that the mandatory long census is irreplaceable. It’s one opinion from a bureaucrat that is primarily self-serving anyway. Quite frankly, it hardly matters what Munir Sheikh thinks about how essential the question “H3 a” is in section “F” of the 40 page census, “How many rooms are there in this dwelling?”
It should be my prerogative whether or not to inform the government how many rooms exist in my house, and [question b of H3] how many of those are bedrooms.
So what is so principled about quitting a $250,000 job, anyway? Is this really the cross that Mr.Sheikh feels he should be nailed to? At best, the head of Statistics Canada has shown that the Canadian economy has recovered remarkably well, if he feels he can quit his position at the drop of a hat. Here’s a tip for the census takers left behind: most Canadians can’t do that. Even on “principle.”
This isn’t a long form census article. It’s more of a rant about how frustrated I am to have to read the same demagoguery on this topic day in and day out. That Canadians care about this nonsense, and not the plight of Afghanistan, really just sort of depresses me in a way that not even words can express.
The 2011 census is expected to cost $660 million, in order to find out information such as incomes, demographics, and language. Do you really want to fill out 40 pages of government questions about “sociocultural information”, where your parents were born, or when your house was constructed? It’s practically like doing your taxes twice.
And here Canadians are, getting worked up into a frenzy, railing against Stephen Harper like he’s some kind of totalitarian dictator for giving them an option out of doing those taxes twice. It’s like your boss telling you take Friday off, and then taking him to the Labour Board for wrongful dismissal.
As Kevin Libin writes, “Canadians are posting lame protest songs on YouTube—and earning press coverage over it for crying out loud.”
It’s the summer. Go out and ride a bicycle. Drink a beer on a patio. Go swimming in one of our million lakes. But for the love of all that’s Canadian, stop whining and complaining about not being forced to answer 40 pages of questions from the government.
Are Canadians so afraid of libery and freedom that when the government actually gives them some small piece of it that they want to give it back?
As Kelly Bundy would say: “The mind woggles!”
Be advised I think your analysis is Bovine Scatology. You have to be drinking the koolaid to believe that 3 weeks ago there was a sizeable proportion of the population concerned about the Invasiveness and privacy aspects of the Census. The unbelievably amateur handling of this issue underscores the Harper Government’s inability to deal with issues that matter to Canadians (deficit, unemployment)to be substituted with these base comforting issues as the Census long form, Pardons and pensions for convicts who are serving or have served their sentences, Lyrics for the National Anthem, blocking a much needed federal review of G8 G20 security arrangements and the beat goes on. Those who support the CPC and discount these issues do so at their peril. The rest of Canada has had enough of Mr. H’s grand plan.
He’s the head of *Statistics* Canada. Have you not been listening to the statisticians about this issue? Making the long-form census voluntary creates substantial problems with the data being returned in the form of sampling bias. The data may become so erroneous that it may cease to be useful at all. That’s the principle he’s resigning over.
I can’t defend the Conservatives on this one. Clement has handled this horribly – he didn’t even *speak* to users of this data before deciding to scrap it?! – and should be removed from cabinet. It’s a bizarre hill to die on.
As I posted on another blog. Stats Can needs My name, my date of birth, my address for voting registration then it is Thank you very much Big Brother now f@#k off out of my life and leave me alone.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m whining and complaining because I hope to begin serving on our town council come this October, and this move will prevent me from having the accurate information I need to do my job properly.
Of course we could always spend a fortune on a regional transit system and just cross our fingers that someone might have use for it. Or flip a coin and build low income housing for families when it’s really needed for seniors. That’s going to get expensive, though. I guess we’ll just have to pay some private research firm to gather demographic information for the town instead.
Wherever will we get the money to do that, I wonder…?
Adrian,
You are making a blanket assumption that no one cares about Afghanistan. That is a complex issue. The StatsCan issue is black-and-white. The government is wrong, period. Makes it easier to express disgust/anger/disbelief/InsertEmotionHere.
They’re wanting to spend more money for less accuracy. If they truly believed that the long-form census is intrusive, they should cancel it altogether. That would have been the ideologically consistent move. Instead they chose the stupid weasel try-to-please-everyone move. A move worthy of a Liberal I must say. This was stupidity that begs, nay DESERVES to be mocked.
I received the long form in 2001, and I kept a copy of my response. Flipping through it, it appears that my form is 32 pages, not 40, so perhaps they added a few pages in the 2006 census.
Just reading over some of my answers right now is giving me a good laugh. My response to the “mandatory” survery certainly didn’t do much to help the accuracy of the exercise…
Right from the beginning, I reported person 2 living in the house, as being the son or daughter of person 1 (that’s me). Somehow nobody at Stats Can ever followed up wondering why the birth date of my fictious son is earlier than my own.
Question 9 – Apparently I was born in Antarctica! Who knew? However, I still managed to report being Inuit as option 4 in question 18.
Question 40 made me laugh. Apparently I was employed as a professor at Starfleet Academy. This is very fitting, because in Question 31, I mentioned that my major field of study at university was starship propulsion systems.
Apparently my house had 164 rooms back then, but surprisingly only 1 bedroom.
Nobody ever came back to follow up on my answers, which I find very strange. Or, maybe they did, because I did move across town shortly after.
Rob C: I like your thinking
Jennifer Smith: What is it that StatsCan gives you out of the 40 page intrusive survey that you can not get locally somehow?
While good stats can be usefull, getting them from me by threatening to jail or fine me is not going to result in good data.
If you need to know how many bedrooms there are – check your local building permits – the info should be there.
Still, no reason you can come up with should trump the right to privacy. None.
Now get off my lawn.
There’s a case to be made that the long form is too intrusive, but Tony Clement isn’t making that case. Instead he’s making categorically stupid suggestions that you can correct a sample bias by increasing the sample size. What idiocy. Either Mr. Clement is downright ignorant or he thinks the public are idiots. Then we’ve got the crowd that thinks that the sky is falling.
On one side we’ve got hysterics and on the other side we’ve got idiots.
Remind me again why the Conservatives decided this was an incredibly pressing issue? Have they solved all the other problems and now they’ve finally got down to the really pressing business of liberating me from filling out form in which my privacy is rigorously protected?
Canadians have had enough of the Harbles of this country.And they will find out come election day that we don’t want Harbles running this country ever again.And Catelli makes no sense either except as a spaquetti.Here is mocking to you Catelli.Mock mock
It isn’t necessarily about how many people are concerned about the privacy concerns of the census, so much as it is a question of why I must read and answer 40 pages of irrelevant questions.
I’m not a fan of Stephen Harper, but I often get the sense that people have lost perspective on the relative importance of issues because of their dislike for him.
It isn’t my problem if the government can’t address the needs of the citizenry without my mandatory compliance. Try harder.
Nope. The shorter census is still mandatory, so the vital statistics are still being counted. What he’s concerned about are questions about how many people in the household speak Spanish, and how much unpaid work each person is doing in their three-bedroom house that they moved to a year ago from Canmore.
More bizarre than demanding you be allowed to fill out 40 pages of deeply personal information?
In what regard? Can you not talk to the people in your community? Get a sense of what people want from townhall meetings?
Do you really need to know how many bedrooms, on average, are in Milton homes? If so, why?
Really? Amazing how municipal planners managed to provide public transit a century before these long form censuses became all the rage. However did they get by?
You could always evaluate how many people use public transit, versus the relative cost of vehicle against transit, and then analyze the possible demand.
By the way, did you know that 1/3 of all households will receive the longer census?
That’s not an argument. It’s an unsupported assertion.
Does not compute. The optional survey provides the best of both worlds.
Funny, I don’t see people making the same argument for mandatory voting. That sure would be useful, too. Even though only 50% of you ever show up.
Awesome.
Remind me again why people have nothing better to do than whine and bitch about government bureaucracy making them do less work?
That should be:
Are Canadians so afraid of liberty and freedom that when the government actually gives them some small piece of it that they want to give it back?
As Kelly Bundy would say: “The mind woggles!”
/someone stole my T
Personal privacy, and private information in my mind, is a case of personal intellectual property. The long form appropriates that property from citizens by threat of force-to help marketers and other interest groups do their jobs easier (cheaper).
Basic census information is a duty of citizenship, it’s not to help groups who get our info for free (or cheaply), so they can better target us to sell their products/charities/whatever.
At the very least, providing this intellectual property should require consent (which a voluntary form achieves), if not compensation by those who use the information for purposes other than providing government services.
I also agree with your sentiments Adrian, and those of Kevin Libin; what a country we live in that the major issue we are arguing over is whether or not a portion of the census should be mandatory…I think it’s just another perpetuation of the ABC political forces that are trying to pick away at the current government.
Leftists don’t like any threat to the gravy train at any time, nor any place.
The long form census has always been the stick with which to beat more money out of the Canadian taxpayer for social re-engineering schemes.
I’ll give the Conservatives crap for trying to distract from their lousy performance with throwaway issues like this one.
The best thing the Conservatives have going for them isn’t their own performance, it’s the performance of the opposition. Who first used the slogan “we suck less”?
After I read your post Adrian I was reading the Economist and I came across this. http://www.economist.com/node/16590962?story_id=16590962&CFID=139751595&CFTOKEN=14137277
Apparently statisticians in the UK are trying to do away with their census entirely. I’m not sure you’d like their alternative though. They think they’d get more accurate results from sample polling and data mining existing government databases and gathering the information together. That has the potential to be far more intrusive than a little form.
Jennifer, baby – go out into the community and actually talk to the people living there; and not just to their ‘representatives’. Find out what real people are thinking and wanting, not just the elites who purport to represent them.
Some years ago, I had the misfortune to help a disapble relative fill out the long form. Unless you are warned a year in advance to keep all invoices and – essentially – every bit of paper about your life, you are in deep trouble when it comes to filling out the forms.
Realistically, if you look at the prime crybabies over this decision, it’s divided between special interest groups and commercial entitities. Both want the info to promote their causes; neither wants to pay for it.
In our household, we’ve tossed coins for severl censuses to determine ‘head of household’. If we have to fill out the long form, we’ll call a family gathering, have a convivial dinner, and consensually determine the answers.
Truly great!!
There is another point to this that you need to take into consideration.
For too long the bureaucrats have been living in a culture where they expect the elected to rubber stamp their recommendations and then if it goes off the rails to expect that minister or PM to fall on the sword.
The way its supposed to work is the administration (bureaucrats) take direction from the executive (elected). The ex-head of Census was probably given his direction and not being used to following orders, much less having a minister give them, was not something he felt obligated to do.
The main point is that, regardless of how one feels about the decision, its been made and the administration has a fiduciary duty to follow through. The opposition is now in the position to state unequivocally if this is worth going to an election over.
So far what I’ve seen reported in the news is liberal and NDP politicians, the head of a nurses union, an ex-liberal that used to work for ex-FM Paul Martin, and one mayor of Edmonton decrying this decision because it effects the amount of money that goes to special interests.
Frankly, I think that this is a good move by the elected government, and its now time for the opposition to say they would reverse it and force an election over the issue or just shut the hell up.
Hmmm,Seems like the loony ward here..1 man,,1 woman 2 children..ALL CANADIAN…That’s all the government needs to know..And isn’t it great to know we saved nearly 250 thousand dollars when that idiot at stats canada quit..Now if we can get the CBC to quit (all of them) we can save billions.And Issachar with all your worldly knowledge why are you not PM????All you idiots talk the talk but cannot walk the walk..PM Harper is so far ahead of all the opposition leaders and MSM that it boggles the mind how you idiots take care of your own families without his help.Your arguing over a FN cencus form and your letting MacGuinty screw you left and right with taxes and your BIG MOUTHS ARE SHUT.What a bunch of losers.
Sure, the potential is there — but we are talking about data already in existence. It’s still a better use of a bureaucrat’s time than trying to co-erce the population into supplying redundant information, or information that the government has no business having.
Remind me again why the Conservatives decided this was an incredibly pressing issue?
They didn’t. The Liberals, desperate for an issue (ANY issue) to attack the Conservatives on, decided it was earth-shakingly important, and the news media naturally latched onto this story and will squeeze it for all it is worth before dropping it and moving on to the next faux scandal.
Have they solved all the other problems and now they’ve finally got down to the really pressing business of liberating me from filling out form in which my privacy is rigorously protected?
No. The real problem (and the news media is negligent in not letting you know this) is that a court case involving a Green Party candidate being prosecuted for refusing to fill out the long-form is just wrapping up, and the government is poised to *lose* the case. The court seems to have decided that there is a Charter violation here (as many have said all along)…
That’s not an argument. It’s an unsupported assertion.
Does not compute. The optional survey provides the best of both worlds.
Supported by statisticians that state that voluntary surveys have too high a degree of error. The usefulness of the data decreases. I trust them in that regard, they know their jobs.
Funny, I don’t see people making the same argument for mandatory voting. That sure would be useful, too. Even though only 50% of you ever show up.
We weren’t talking about voting. We can, sure, lets make it mandatory. Write up a petition to parliament, and I’ll sign it.
We weren’t talking about the census either, until the government decided to change it. They made it the topic du jour. Not us. If they had left it alone, we wouldn’t even be discussing it.
I’d rather the statisticians not be able to do their jobs properly, than coerce private citizens to surrender minute details of their lives that really have no business being the property of the government.
All they did was take the census, and remove the offensive aspect of it being mandatory.
I’d like to see the government prove in a court of law that Canadians have a constitutional obligation to provide the government with this information.
Hello my Northern neighbors. I’m just curious as to if the Harper move is eliminating your Census altogether, or just downsizing it? I sure am glad the American Census is just 2 pages long, and the most intrusive question is – “What’s your race or ethnicity”.
No Fred, the Conservatives decided that this was something they wanted to spend time on. Then they got smacked around for it. But the Conservatives brought the subject up. With all the other issues that they could be dealing with, they decided that the census was the issue to work on.
And so what if they’re about to lose a case in court over the mandatory issue? If that’s true, then let the case proceed, deal with the problem after the government loses in court.
He’s not eliminating it and he’s not downsizing it.
He’s actually expanding it. The long form will be sent to many more people than before. It just won’t be mandatory.
It will cost more.
It will still ask all the same questions, but will have less accurate data.
They tried to have their cake and eat it too. It rarely works out well.
Tim K..
They are wanting to do away with just the long form of the census, which one in five receive.
The short, 8 question census form will still be issued.
“They are wanting to do away with”
Uh huh.
Are they saying that? Because they’re certainly not actually *doing* that. What they’re actually doing is sending the long form to even more people. That’s kind of the exact opposite of doing away with something.
So you’re OK with spending more government money to collect less accurate data just so long as it is not mandatory.
I find that odd. I never thought I’d see you in favour of more government waste in pursuit of frivolous endeavors.
It is so nice to know that liberals want to threaten jail or fines for not filling out this form. That is the issue missing, the threats, and there are threats.
So, according to liberals it is ok to be put in jail for not filling out this form, but under no circumstances should those protesters be jailed for causing damage and threats. Would those supporting- free some guy for having a bomb in his house- and threatening violence at the summits, be as concerned if he was in jail for not filling out his census.
Voluntary or mandatory there are those that will give very stupid answers to very private information.
Me, my race will be the 100 yrd dash.
Realistically, if you look at the prime crybabies over this decision, it’s divided between special interest groups and commercial entitities. Both want the info to promote their causes; neither wants to pay for it.
The best summation of this whole ridiculous fuss.
“They’re wanting to spend more money for less accuracy”
Bullfeathers.. how is a larger, voluntary sampling less accurate???
“I trust them in that regard, they know their jobs.”
I trust them to do the job they were hired to do, NOT belly-ache over a rule change.
And Jennifer…
all MY personal info you say you need to get elected…is NONE of your damn buisness.
Come up with your own damn platform based on all as equals instead of using info to target special interests who happen to support whatever cause you might be on.!
The long census form has NOT been cancelled for 2011.
It will be sent to MORE homes and be voluntary,
it will be more accurate NOT less.
Get a grip Liberals, try as you might, this is NO scandal.
Voluntary over mandatory participation is a winner with the public, regardless of what the Liberal MsM would have you believe.!
“how is a larger, voluntary sampling less accurate?”
Are you serious? It’s called sample bias. The people who voluntarily fill out the form aren’t a representative sample of the whole population anymore, they’re a representative sample of people who fill like filling out the form.
A voluntary form is simply less accurate that a mandatory one. Saying the opposite is like saying that 2+2=5 if you do it often enough.
If you want to say that a less accurate form is a price we should be willing to pay for less coercion, you can make that argument. But saying that a voluntary form sent to 1/3 is more accurate than a mandatory form sent to 1/5 only displays ignorance.
Essentially, the Liberal’s complaint is that poor people, minorities, and generally most of their preferred victim groups will not fill out the survey unless threatened by jail or fines, and this will create the selection bias we hear so much about. Should a conservative suggest this, he would quickly be labeled of hating poor people or of racism: “How dare you suggest that poor people are lazy?”
But never mind that piece of hypocrisy, the real tragedy for the Liberals is that by not filling out the survey in proportion to their numbers, these ‘disadvantaged groups’ will be further disadvantaged because then they will receive less government assistance.
So instead of letting these people help themselves, and inform them that filling out the survey will be beneficial to them, the Liberals do what they do best: scream and yelp hysterically at Harper.
I’ve borrowed this from another thread, it says rather well what I and others know about factual statistical gathering.
“The claims that voluntary data collected is less accurate than data forced by threat shows a serious ignorance of even the most basic laws of statistics.
With proper sampling, even very small samples can result in astonishingly accurate results.
That is why business, governments and the media use them on a daily basis.
Why is it only Statistics Canada cannot do their job unless they are holding a gun to the heads of Canadians”?
C’mon Issachar, do you really believe that the mandatory census produced reliable or representative samples?
I haven’t seen you crusading to have Jedi recognized as an official religion, even though it was highly recorded on the last, official, and apparently reliable mandatory census.
This is so silly. The sample isn’t reliable anyways. I would argue that those volunteering to fill out the long form census would provide a much more reliable dataset than the mandatory.
Jedi’s never lie, after all.
That might actually be possible, there are certain obligations of citizens to the government, filling out a reasonable census is one of them. You can argue about specific questions but dropping the entire long version is excessive when it is used to widely to help government provide services to Canadians. There is no defending this decision on grounds. If you believe the government needs the data collected in the long form it needs to be collected in this way. The short form provides only cursory data, to really know who the population is, where they live and what their needs are you need to collect the long form data.
Either the long form is necessary or it shouldn’t be collected at all. If it is necessary it cannot be a voluntary process.
That is not an opinion, its a statistical fact. You can find the arguments everyone online or you can read my blog for it.
Why the government would choose to send out this ‘intrusive’ census form and tell people its ok if they don’t fill it out it very hard to understand.
With all due respect William, what you and others “know” is simply not true.
The reason businesses and governments use voluntary sampling in polling is that they have no choice and it’s cheaper.
Voluntary sampling is simply less accurate than mandatory sampling. (Assuming you enforce compliance of course.)
This isn’t a judgement about whether or not the mandatory form is good or bad, it’ just a fact about polling and statistics.
You’re just factually incorrect. This makes about as much sense as Gayle arguing yesterday that discrimination on the basis of race isn’t necessarily racist.
Good point Ha. Of course the mandatory form doesn’t necessarily produce perfectly accurate data.
That’s a good point, but it doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Clement is talking out of his backside when he says they can just correct for sample bias by sending the form to one in three households instead of one in five.
The Conservatives tried to have their cake and eat it too and they’ve put themselves into a bad position.
Given what they wanted, they should have just made the form optional and left it at that.
Admit that the data will be slightly less accurate, but say that they think it’s a price worth paying and that it’s not right to coerce people into filling out the form.
You could respect that. Instead they’re defending a blatantly false assertion.
With all do respect Issachar…
Why won’t Liberals trust information obtained without threat of criminality?
WHY?
That is the question we want answered, we like our opinions to be backed up with facts, so far you haven’t provided any.
Small VOLUNTARY samplings, are accurate, they are in use daily accross Canada.
Usable info without any threat, reality gets in the way again.!
Why again is forced info more reliable than voluntary?
I suppose I could get a good sense of the kinds of people who tend to show up at townhall meetings, just as online polls give an accurate sampling of people who tend to answer online polls.
And I have been talking to a lot of people going door to door, mostly on weekday afternoons so I don’t disturb their evenings when they might be reading. From that I have concluded that most people in my ward are seniors and/or unemployed. Who knew?
Just off the top of my head, how about performing a reality check on property assessments vs. real home values and family income so we can more reasonably set property tax rates?
And I’m running in an older ward so no, I can’t get that from building permits. Although just the fact that those are available makes me question the sanctity of such information.
It was called a horse. And current ridership isn’t going to tell us where people work and how they get there.
Interestingly, the 1901 census asked for extremely detailed information on origins, employment and housing – including the number of months employed and whether your house was made of wood, brick, stone, etc.
And of course it asked for religion and ethnic origin, just like every census since Confederation has done.
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/census-1901/001013-130-e.html
Face it, you guys don’t really care about ‘privacy’ – you want a radically reduced government and you think this will get you there. It won’t. It will just give you sloppy, inefficient, more expensive government.
“Basic census information is a duty of citizenship”
You’re making this up. There is no such thing as duty of citizenship. The government has a duty to its citizens, not the other way around. A citizen’s only “duty” is not to violate the rights of other individuals.
Otherwise I agree with your comments.
What people are losing sight of here, too: StatCan is one of those less than biased* entities that wants the all this data collected.
Statistics Canada,
wait for it …
wait for it …
is a government entity that makes money from selling intrusive and confidential data that you must surrender under pain of fines and/or imprisonment.
SC is actually profitable at it, which is downright RARE for the majority of government (Or, at least, they were so in the 1990s).
This is how much of a demand exists for data-extracted-by-force-of-law by private entities such as NGOs, charities, businesses, and think-tanks.
When I worked as a student for StatCan well over a decade ago, they were already well versed, if not state of the art on database tecnology, and datamining methods.
They also had full, but carefully controlled-and-monitored access to the VERY confidential data from Revenue Canada, among other government departments and entities.
They have access to enough data already, quite frankly!
If they’re competent and trustworthy enough to handle ALL of our tax info, then I have FULL confidence that my former coworkers have the ability, technology, and knowledge to deeply mine and extract statistics from all the already intrusive data that the federal government already collects from all it’s ministries and departments.
* SC is biased in that it has an interest in collecting the data, to sell the gathered statistics from a monopoly position, at a profit. I will, and no one should ever, EVER deign to twist my words to imply that I mean they’re not impartial in the actual collection of their statistical data. I am merely pointing out that they do, as a part of their day to day operations, generate significant revenue from the data they compile.
The government is actually proposing only two things :
1) to send out the form to three times as many people, and
2) to remove any penalties for non-compliance
If you make the form mandatory, then unless each form should be reviewed for accuracy, the information is unverified and therefore possibly invalid, e.g. Dave’s hilarious example above, the 55,000 people who belonged to the Church of the Jedi Knights, etc,etc. so to claim that “mandatory”, but unverified information is somehow more acccurate than “voluntary” is ridiculous. What’s really scary is that organizations have apparently been basing serious decisions on the information provided by people like Dave.
Personally, I think the resignation was more on account of Clement’s comments along the lines “some people at StatsCan think they are an independant entity, but actually they are not – they report to the Minister”. Very true, and time some bureaucrats were reminded of the fact.
“no such thing as duty of citizenship”
Ridiculous. You’ve clearly never heard of the idea of the social contract.
It’s called sample bias. Seriously, you’re spouting nonsense.
how is a larger, voluntary sampling less accurate???”
Simple explanation; such surveys depend upon random sampling to be unbiased. Voluntary polling tends to be self selecting – Statistics 101.
That said, 40 bloody pages to fill out?? After two pages I would begin making things up for amusement.
Coincidently, I did much the same thing in 2001 but, unfortunately didn’t keep a copy. All that I can remember offhand is that my ethnic origin is Inuit and that the language spoken at home is Ukrainian.
“Useful” data indeed.
I understand what you are saying, but I still reject the assertion that a mandatory census is more reliable than a voluntary one because forcing someone to answer a form does not, in any way, guarantee they report answers truthfully.
With the voluntary form, I think you would have higher percentrage of people who truthfully answer the questions and thus might actually increase the reliability.
I totally agree the Cons should have just said this isn’t reliable anyways and we aren’t going to coerce anybody to fill it out, but please do. The left leaning MSM is turning this into a much bigger story than most canadians care about. Add it to the list of scandals…wafergate, statisticsgate… whats next?
No. I have no faith in the Conservative Party to reduce government whatsoever. As pointed out already by Aaron Wherry, this census will be $100 million more expensive than the 2006 census.
My point, as I think I’ve made clear, is the principle that government isn’t entitled to demand 40 pages of information from its citizens.
This is the Conservative Party. They waste money in pursuit of frivolous endeavors all the time.
But that isn’t the point either.
You don’t find it disturbing that the government found it necessary to persecute somebody to the extent that they wasted time, money, and frustration to drag someone before the courts for refusing to answer personal information?
The social contract hardly seems to include telling the government how you get to work.
Perhaps not Adrian. In any case, Darcy said that *basic* census information is a duty of citizenship.
But Potato’s statement that there is no such thing as a duty of citizenship is both ignorant and foolish. Ignorance annoys me.
Ignorant arguments discredit the position they purport to help.
Disturbing? Not really no.
1) I’ve filled out the long census. It’s not that intrusive and there aren’t any penalties for mistakes like there are when I do my taxes.
2) There are plenty of other things that are far more disturbing about our society that the government is downright ineffective in doing anything about or isn’t even trying. It’s hard to get terribly disturbed about a census form when there are other issues.
Off the top of my head:
1) The racist hiring policies of the civil service we were talking about the other day, although they’ve been provoked into ordering a review of the practice.
2) The kangaroo courts of the so-called “human rights” commissions.
3) The appalling conditions on some native reserves in Canada and the high rates of drug abuse, alcoholism and unemployment in those communities.
4) Human traffickers using our immigration system to bring people into virtual slavery within our borders.
5) Organized crime.
issachar says:
July 22, 2010 at 6:00 am
No Fred, the Conservatives decided that this was something they wanted to spend time on.
No, that was the news media. The Conservatives made one announcement initially, then were forced to defend their actions by the antics of the opposition and vested interests.
Then they got smacked around for it. But the Conservatives brought the subject up. With all the other issues that they could be dealing with, they decided that the census was the issue to work on.
Again, I don’t think so. The public doesn’t either, so why go after something as seemingly unimportant as this? The Canadian public cares about the economy, jobs, crime and health care.
And so what if they’re about to lose a case in court over the mandatory issue? If that’s true, then let the case proceed, deal with the problem after the government loses in court.
I still say they took their action *because* of this court case (which isn’t ‘decided’ yet, of course…it is the government, not the court, that believes this to be a Charter violation).
We’ll see. Perhaps we can reduce those 55,000 Canadian Jedis to a more reasonable number next time around…:)
I think the government’s mistake was underestimating the ability of the media and opposition to create a scandal over such a non-story. I mean, it’s the census! I couldn’t care less one way or the other, and neither do most people I know.
Actually, he resigned because Clement gave an interview where he suggested Sheikk agreed that the voluntary census, which will cost Canadians 30 millions dollars extra by the way, so so much for fiscal conservatism, was an acceptable replacement for the mandatory census.
Basically Clement said Sheikk agreed with him. That is like saying a doctor agrees that it is OK to smoke, drink and eat to your heart’s content because there is no chance that will affect your life span.
Define special interest group. I think you will find that the Manning Centre and the Fraser Institute are also special interest groups.
So your problem is not “special interest groups”. Your problem is that the majority of these groups do not agree with YOUR special interest groups.
Why the need to speak condescendingly to Jennifer? Do you know her. Do you think the addition of the term “baby” to her name adds to your comment?
It will still ask all the same questions, but will have less accurate data.
Less accurate, how? You really believe that the threat of fines or jail time produces accurate, honest information? Do you really believe that there are 55,000 Jedi Knights in Canada, too?
So what about regular everyday polling, then? Is it also so inaccurate that we should ignore it? Someone better tell EKOS, Ipsos/Reid, Nanos, etc…
Issachar says:
That’s a good point, but it doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Clement is talking out of his backside
Here’s another good point: the head of Statistics Canada actually WORKS FOR Minister Tony Clement (and through him, the government of Canada). He doesn’t get to decide what issue he polls on or how he polls it. Tony Clement is his BOSS, and he should have remembered that before he felt it necessary to resign.
when he says they can just correct for sample bias by sending the form to one in three households instead of one in five.
(that’s what ‘weighting’ is for, isn’t it?)
Doesn’t matter anyway. Bottom line: all that information is available from other sources anyway. Threatening people with jail is NOT NECESSARY.
Yes, the minister is in charge. That doesn’t mean he’s doing HIS job well at all. As a voter, I’m not impressed by blatantly foolish statements from a minister in the government.
Weighting only works if you know how to apply the weighting. You should know that.
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As I said earlier, making the census optional may indeed be worth the loss in data accuracy. But that’s no reason to put up with government ministers being either ignorant or treating us like fools.
Indeed.
Frankly I expect more from the Conservatives because I voted for a Conservative in the last election. They’re also in government so I hold them to a higher standard at present.
Come on Fred, don’t be deliberately obtuse.
It’s called sample bias and it’s been discussed to death all over the place. It’s not a big mystery.
Yes, the mandatory data isn’t 100% accurate because people can lie, and polls aren’t useless, but a mandatory census is MORE accurate.
Why? The sampling bias is less because laziness and just not bothering to fill something out is more prevalent than people bothering to lie on the form.
Should the long form be mandatory? Meh, I don’t really care much either way.
But Conservative supporters look like ignorant fools when they try to support a goal with stupid reasons. There are perfectly good reasons, so why defend the stupid ones?
Issachar says:
July 26, 2010 at 6:51 am
Yes, the minister is in charge. That doesn’t mean he’s doing HIS job well at all. As a voter, I’m not impressed by blatantly foolish statements from a minister in the government.
I wasn’t either, but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he just wasn’t expecting to have to answer so many questions about such a small thing.
Weighting only works if you know how to apply the weighting. You should know that.
I do, in fact. I just know (okay, I have faith) that other sources will provide the necessary information to balance the new voluntary long-form properly.
You must have more faith than me in believing people are too lazy to lie; if I were angered by being forced to fill out a 40-page form with obtrusive questions (and that determination is up to ME, not you. Sorry…) under threat of jail, you bet I would lie. Apparently 160,000 people simply refused to fill it out in 2006…that’s another valid means of protest.
As I said earlier, making the census optional may indeed be worth the loss in data accuracy. But that’s no reason to put up with government ministers being either ignorant or treating us like fools.
Agreed. But like I said, who could have expected the media-driven frenzy to whip up this much animosity among other political parties and special-interest groups? I’m waiting for the next round of polls, myself. We’ll see how engaged the Canadian public really is…
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Splendor Sine Occasu says:
July 22, 2010 at 9:15 pm
I think the government’s mistake was underestimating the ability of the media and opposition to create a scandal over such a non-story. I mean, it’s the census! I couldn’t care less one way or the other, and neither do
do most people I know.
My thoughts exactly. As I said to Issachar, I just don’t see this as an issue of any great importance to the average Canadian. The economy, jobs, crime, health care…these are things that people vote on. Not the census.
When will these people learn to read. It was never the minister’s intention to cancel the long form. And where in the Charter does it say you have a right to the mandatory long form with threats of jail or fines if not filled out.
Maybe this group should learn to read English or understand it.
Francophone and Acadian group takes census change to court
And they want the taxpayer to pay for their stupidity. They will be witnesses tomorrow. Will they understand that they are out to lunch in what they think is happening. Guess the media and libs really did a selling job, and can’t wait for them to have egg on their face tomorrow.
You’re going with “he just wasn’t prepared to answer questions”? Really? The minister just didn’t anticipate “will the data be as accurate?”, when he announced a change in the census? Come on man, that’s an obvious question. In fact, it’s the most obvious question.
But your last point seems to imply that the minister just couldn’t be honest because of the media frenzy.
So which is it? Does the minister know the data will be less accurate, but believes it’s a cost worth paying, but lies to us for political gain? Or is he just incredibly ignorant and unable to anticipate obvioius questions?
Personally I think the answer is the former with a touch of willful delusion.
Was just answering your last point when I LOST THE WHOLE POST while trying to quote. Again. I HATE this editor.
Too late now, soory.
Gayle,
What the issue really boils down to is this. The Conservatives don’t agree that a $500 fine and threats of a jail sentence should be used to get information out of Canadians. Apparently, most of the Opposition do.
So the long census form will be voluntary. That’s it. Perhaps this way we will not have 63,000 Canadians reporting that their religion is “Jedi Knights” which to me says quite loudly “none of your business”. And I totally agree.
Jennifer, the federal gov’t isn’t and shouldn’t be responsible for “regional” information. Transit should be a municipal and provincial domain, with the voice of the taxpayer being heard, as they will be the ones paying for it. There are several low cost polling sites that can be used. In our area, we used that to get responses to transit plans directly from the residents it affected. Unfortunately, our local council just went ahead and did their own thing, informing the citizenry after the fact. The decision was not in line with what residents indicated they wanted. (Perhaps the council relied on the last census–I’m not sure). Anyway, good luck with it and good for you that you are getting involved.
Never trust a webform. Notepad is a very useful program.
But yes, I’m getting really sick of this subject. It’s a trite comment, but politicians and commenters of all stripes are being nitwits this month.
Sorry to hear about that. It’s never happened to me. What happened?