Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

A few more for the list

by Aaron Wherry on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 9:25pm - 0 Comments

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is disturbed. The mayor of Fredericton is stumped. Peterborough’s medical officer of health is concerned.

The Chinese Canadian National Council, meanwhile, endorses the National Statistics Council’s proposal.

Tags: Canadian Federation of Independent Business, census, Chinese Canadian Council, Fredericton, National Statistics Council, Statistics Canada

More by Aaron Wherry

http://intensedebate.com/people/c_9 c_9

I made a list of all these various entities (of both sides of the debate, so it was a little unbalanced visually), but quickly found it exhausting to maintain. Is anyone else still maintaining such a list (with links) ?

James Connors

I speak in favour of Aaron Wherry.

If Sun TV hires him . . . I'd watch.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Scott_Tribe Scott_Tribe

Yes. David Eaves is.. though he may not have the latest ones.

Another one is Census Watch.

http://intensedebate.com/profiles/saskboy saskboy

The only opinion that matters in this country comes from the Prime Minister's Office. One guess which person has the most influence in that office. Why even bother petitioning the government any more, they are simply going to do whatever they want, whether its a US style DMCA that prevents you from moving your DVD collection to iPods, crippling Statistics Canada, or removing your Charter rights for a week convenient to the state.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Stewart_Smith Stewart_Smith

Actually I think that will eventually be an important turn in this. The opposition really should ask why Stephen Harper, PM took such a personal issue in this decision.

saskboy

It seems futile though. I can only think of three times that the Conservatives/Harper have backed down or lost after a large public outcry about a Conservative gaffe. They lost the gay marriage reversal, they didn't keep the Greens out of the last TV debate, and they didn't change the national anthem back to the 19th century version. This change arguably is the most significant, and I don't see Harper admitting he was wrong, or he'll look weak before the Fall election. People won't even notice the difference until during/after the next census anyway.
jarrid

Your average Canadian isn't as enamoured with the long-form census as the left/lib elites,

au contraire,

it makes them wanna gag.

Saskboy's analysis is much closer to the mark than your continued wishful thinking Stewart.

Anon Liberal

Your vast knowledge of what "average Canadians" are enamored with wouldn't be based on what you personally are enamored with would it?

http://intensedebate.com/people/Halo_Override Halo_Override

And why he won't defend it.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Stewart_Smith Stewart_Smith

saskboy & jarrid missed my point, I don't expect that the fight to save the census will be successful, nor do I expect the census to be a decisive point in any election. It is however another example of Harper personally meddling in the details of Minister's files for political purposes. Nice compact illustrations are always useful to outline a larger theme.

It is an interesting example because the fact that it is poor governance is not in dispute, and the rational for the move in the first place has evaporated like emails out of Bernier's inbox. Moreover, Harper is stuck with hip, slick, clever Tony (as opposed to say earnest Baird) trying to defend an issue in which all of the intellectual content works against him. Tony has no faux outrage in him, after all he is off to a concert tonight!

It is also interesting because the nonpolitical protagonist, Sheikh so far seems 1) to have acted beyond reproach and 2) to have an army of supporters. This is a contrast to say Lynda Keen & some others who had made their share of enemies during their career. As a result, the best the smear campaign has come up with is Spector's nonsensical analysis and a few racist comments on blogs.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok Sean

Can anyone explain why Spector is so obsessed with Sheikh? Even if it suddenly came to light that the man was complicit in all of this, I don't see the fundamental idiocy of this move, nor the general opposition to it, evaporating.
http://intensedebate.com/people/TJCook TJCook

I think Spector is working furiously to create either a distraction or a scapegoat in this.

You know, the kind of raw material that will allow the jarrids and the wilsons to bellow triumphantly and believe they've won the debate. At this point, I don't think they've provided arguments strong enough even to convince those who want desperately to be convinced.
http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok Sean

I don't hold Spector in much esteem, but at the same time I've never thought him to be a neocon toady.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Stewart_Smith Stewart_Smith

At one point, Clement floated the line that this was about StatsCan wanting to be an independent (read nonaccountable) agency. The best evidence in favour is some letters written by academic statisticians calling for this, in response to the killing of the long form. This would be a much better narrative for the Conservatives, fighting the entitlements of an entrenched bureaucracy.
Clement seems to have backed off this line. After all, although he does a great impersonation, Tony is no idiot and he knows Sheikh. I would expect Dmitri to pick up the ball and see if getting even more outrageous cannot be made to work. I would expect every speech and statement Sheikh has ever made is currently under scrutiny as are any potentially embarrassing family connections. Shiekh is very vulnerable if they are able to discredit him because he can’t disclose the details of his advice to Clement which would likely be his best defense.
The only scenario out there that holds together is that Sheikh is a civil servant who accepts the government prerogative to set policy and as a result he was preparing to implement a policy he profoundly disagreed with. Spector wants to somehow argue that means the policy couldn’t really be all that bad. (This has a small bit of traction… some of the non-expert statements about the loss of the long form have been over the top.) Spector’s problem is that in order to gain this concession (that the very existence of Canada does not hang in balance) logically it follows that Clement lied to the Canadian people about the advice he received from StatsCan, sparking Sheikh’s resignation. My guess is this is why Clement backed off. Spector’s response is to make unfinished speculations about Sheikh’s motivations with lots of ?. He has to leave them unfinished, because if he did finish them his column would look like Feschuk’s but without the humour.
http://intensedebate.com/people/charlesh Charles H.

Spector's column today is particularly puzzling. "How Mr. Harper can calm the census waters" offers the solution that all that's needed to put this census thing behind us is for Harper to offer Sheikh his job back?

Yeah, I dunno either.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Halo_Override Halo_Override

I agree the fight won't be successful, but I'm not so certain it won't come back to bite them hard. It's got front page value and the mechanics of the disagreement are pretty straightforward and easy to grasp. This might have legs.

Nice Clement/Baird observation.
http://intensedebate.com/profiles/saskboy saskboy

"It is however another example of Harper personally meddling in the details of Minister's files for political purposes."

If that's your point, I didn't miss it at all, I was making the same one.

jarrid

Take this census and shove it
I ain't filling it out no more
My woman done left and took all the reasons
I was filling the dang thing for
You better not try to stand in my way
As I'm ripping it up and throwing it on the floor.
Take this census and shove it
I ain't filling it out no more

(With apologies to Johnny Paycheck)

http://intensedebate.com/people/Halo_Override Halo_Override

Just Johnny?
http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok Sean

Well done!

We should start a census playlist. How about Clement's I Fought the Blogs (and the Blogs Won) ? :)

Patchouli

XTC:
One, two, three, four, five
Census questions over the line!
Can't tell the difference
Tween a lemon and a lime
Cuz steve and tony want to cut the questions for all time…

Sean

(to the tune of Don't Fence Me In, by Cole Porter)

Oh give me Rand, lots of Rand and a bit of SunNews
Don't count me in
Figure out the bedrooms from Google Streetview
Don't count me in

I want stimulus cheques, and a new arena
I want a safety net, but I don't want to see ya
I'm still pissed off about the NEP, yeah
Don't count me in

Give me tweets, lots of tweets, that defy common sense
Don't count me in
Screw elite understanding, we got Tony Clement
Don't count me in

I want government gone, I don't wan't to be taxed
But if it's something I use, it better not get axed
Mainly I'm angry, can't seem to relax
Don't count me in

Stewart_Smith

I gave you a thumbs up, jarrid. I liked that you brought a refreshing perspective to this conversation.

For you Neanderthals that missed it, jarrid was pointing out an important and personal truth that could easily be lost in this discussion. Statistics indicate that most of the opposition to filling out the census is from males. Moreover, those males represent a particularly vulnerable portion of the Canadian mosaic and need to be protected. Census objectors typically have anger impulse, and personal hygiene issues as jarrid notes. Moreover they are completely incapable of forming a bond with a woman that she finds full-filling and nurturing. As a result, they are typically left in squalid conditions, all alone, angry at a world that goes on without them. They deserve our compassion, not our ridicule.
Holly Stick

Doesn't scan.

Greg

Your average Canadian isn't as enamoured with the long-form census as the left/lib elites,

That may be true, but they do like their roads paved and their hospitals and schools built in the right places. Destroying the census will have concrete impacts on the lives of average people. But Conservatives don't care about average people anyway. Like the radicals of the 19th century, they just want to destroy the state.
JamesHalifax

Greg wrote:
"That may be true, but they do like their roads paved and their hospitals and schools built in the right places. Destroying the census will have concrete impacts on the lives of average people"

You're wrong, Greg. You get your roads paved when you need new ones. A census doesn't tell you that….the number of potholes tells you that.

The only lives impacted seriously by the use of voluntary information are the groups/organizations that currently use StatsCan as a free datamining service.

As for wanting to destroy the state….I'd say you may be more correct if you clarified that as, "Destroy the state Trudeau created"…..and there are millions of us who feel the same way. Trudeau did more damage to this country than anyone else.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok Sean

Amen. Don't even get me started on Tupper, while we're at it…

http://intensedebate.com/people/charlesh Charles H.

Hey, Tupper's good for a laugh. (Never faced Parliament; forcibly ejected as PM by the GG…)

http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

1. Hospital locations don't affect lives?
2. It's not free for those groups which use the data.
3. You'd prefer a nation engaged in civil war with Quebec, with no Charter of Rights and Freedoms, homosexual acts criminalized, lotteries illegal, breathalyzer tests illegal, conscription in place, and for us to still be beholden to the Queen? Huh.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Halo_Override Halo_Override

I hope my higher power (aka The Force) protects me from ever living in a society organized by you.

a-non

I gotta wonder whether all these “popularity contest” type posts are actually productive. It’s as if we’re taking a straw poll to decide whether to build a perpetual motion machine.

There is a political debate over whether something like a mandatory census is an intrusive infringement of personal freedoms that’s excessive for the purpose of gathering data that is useful for public policy. But it’s being conflated with the question of whether a voluntary survey can do the exact same thing as a mandatory census, simply by pumping up the sample size and trying some targetted advertising.

http://intensedebate.com/people/Geiseric Geiseric

The only debate about whether blah blah intrusive blah blah blah policy is the one Conservative sycophants are trying to stir up but you can't stir up what isn't there. Most Canadians just answer the damn questions anyway. Its not like anyone's going to read them.

a-non

Off-topic follow-up: actually, the map was the ONLY thing I recognized. I had to Google the name "Geiseric" afterward to know the meaning.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SeanStok Sean

While it's true that numbers don't automatically bestow merit, I think the sheer number and nature of representative groups decrying the change are hard to overlook in this case.

The conflation has more to do with Clement and the government's dodging and weaving – they keep vascillating between the "more long forms overcomes their voluntary nature" and "no matter the cost to data and informed policy, the freedom of Canadians is too important." Above all, they're trying to avoid the reasonable argument that holds a census to be an intrusion of sorts, but an awfully minor one in a comparative sense; and one that is justified for the greater good.

If this was really about liberty to them, why on earth isn't the entire census being made voluntary?

JamesHalifax

Sean.

I agree. I don't like any MANDATORY requirements when it comes to personal information. None of the census should be mandatory, but as Paul Wells has pointed out before……..baby steps.
JamesHalifax

Dr. Rosana Pellizzari – Peterborough Medical Officer opposed to the elimination of the mandatory census.

Quel surpris!!!

she also happens to be a failed NDP candidate in a former election.

Strange how Aaron Wherry always leaves out the little bits that might provide some balance eh?