Hanging out with Iggy has you confused, Wherry. You posted Submissions III, then just Submissions, now Submissions II. Good God man, get a grip!

Frankly, this is one of the very useful uses of the long form census that I am not so worried about defending.

There is no question that a lot of the long form census data is useful to many people, and it would be more difficult and even impossible for some people to do what they want, like genealogists and historians, without it. That in and of itself is insufficient to justify it. And I say that as a historian and amateur genealogist. The government could do lots of things that would make things more convenient or easier for lots of people.

However, the long form results in better policy and better governance. That for me is sufficient to justify the expense, the very tiny incursion on privacy, the very remote and minor threat of a fine.

You know Wherry, you're not at your best when you're battling straw men. No one is arguing that census submissions are worthless. Rather, people are arguing that census submissions shouldn't be collected on pain of jail/fines.

Ahhh, this is kind of how the sponsorship scandal felt. Hope you're enjoying it Harperites :)

Incidentally, a scathing editorial in that neocon rag, the National Post, written by CPC-shill Tasha Kheiridden: "The Sad Tale of Tony Clement".

Maybe they should cut out the middleman and replace Wherry's column with a link to Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.

I love those T-shirts.

I think you can get "Thank you Munir Sheikh" Tees online too.

O.K. so I was kidding. But one can easily imagine it.

One thing I've probably missed is the "100 academic experts petition" that is rolled out every time there is a move to disturb the left/lib status quo. They came out on prorogation, the coaliiton, the doing away of the faint-hope clause, the lowerering of the GST etc…

The census doesn't violate Canadians' right to privacy. Practically anyone reading this has posted messages on the Internet voluntarily with more information about their lives than they'll give the government directly.

Hey, have you seen the new commercial for that 'small dogs' dog food? About how the woman (and Brooke Shields, while I'm thinking about it) relies on experts for the freshest vegetables, some other stuff, and what to feed her dog? Because experts know stuff.

I can't imagine where Mars Canada came up with the idea that THAT would go over well.

Actually, I think a pretty strong argument can be made that the census actually does violate s.8 of the Charter ('unreasonable search and seizure'), in that the government is coercing perfectly innocent citizens to divulge personal information on the threat of fines or imprisonment.

However, I'm equally sure that the courts would save the violation under s.1. In otherwords, the court might agree that it was a violation of Charter rights, but a rather minor one that can be justified.

LKO, about the existence of my imagined T-shirt, you're no doubt right that something either identical or very similar exists. It just makes me laugh that someone would actually put on such a T-shirt. I mean I'd understand a Liberal partisan, or an ivory tower academic but as for anyone else, I would say, get a life already.

Re the automatically generated expert's petition. Some of the media still use this to make a story (guys like Aaron for example) but I think a lot of us are starting to see that much of this is driven by either political partisanship or self-interest and not because someone is drawing on theri so-called expertise in the matter. The academic world is rife, as we all know, with leftist types. That's just a simple fact.

I think they'd stop before that and find that a census form was not a "search and seizure" and even if under some strange and new interpretation of that section they found it was, I'm sure they would not find it to be "unreasonable". All without resort to section 1.

And there is no constitutional right to privacy.

my chances of going to jail once the Tories are done will have gone up a fair bit

Spoken like a career criminal. Personally, I don't commit crimes, so the likelihood of me going to jail is zero regardless of criminal code sentencing provisions. But I could see how you'd be terrified of the massive increase in your own chances. :)

I can actually understand your issue with this. Kady O'Malley has expressed the same sentiment, I mean really if it is the long form census that brings down Stephen Harper it will be one for the history books. That said, regardless of your partisan affiliation it is pretty much a given in Canadian politics that PMs outstay their welcome and are generally thrown out by the electorate. Moreover, my observation is that the tipping point is often not that substantive an issue, nor is it necessarily fair to the incumbent. However, if a small issue is consistent with a narrative that the public at large has already bought then its importance is magnified.

And boom goes the argument that StatsCan guards your privacy by locking up your census in a steel vault hidden under the Deifenbunker.
Your privacy is guaranteed until it isn't.

Lots and lots of history and caselaw on search and seizure. I'm not aware of it ever being used to create a right to privacy for its own sake. The right to privacy of section 8 is akin to a physical parallel of the right to remain silent: you cannot be compelled to give testimony against yourself and you cannot be unreasonably compelled to give physical/electronic evidence against yourself.

But that is not what we are dealing with here. That "right to privacy" does not extend to non-prosecutorial evidence gathering as far as I am aware. The government wants the data for the value of the data itself not the value of building any case against you.

Even then, seems quite a stretch to say that the courts would have any difficulty accepting the census an unreasonable search and seizure since it is "authorized by law" and the law itself is reasonable and the manner in which the search was carried out is reasonable.

As importantly, the Constitution clearly provide the government the right, even the obligation, to collect census information. It does not limit that right to body counts.

Question: if an argument that nobody has ever made explodes in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it go "boom"?

Although to fair, based on yesterday's Cosh post, LKO might very well be a member of an organized crime ring. Clarity is elusive.

It's just that the people who are "up in arms" about this are the usual suspects. For instance, you're from Toronto and you assisted at an anniversary rally of the pro-Coalition forces last December. Good for you. You were also probably incensed by Harper proroguing Parliament last December, the 104 time this was done by a Prime Minister in our history, and you probably were flabbergasted when it was (falsely) reported that the Prime Minister allegedly put a communion wafer in his pocket.

Most Canadians either don't agree with you on most of these issues, or could care less.

That's all I'm saying.

I live in Toronto, but am not from here. I have neither attended, not assisted in, anything regarding coalition or prorogation rallies. I was troubled by the last prorogation, but actually less than the previous one. I was flabbergasted that anyone could believe the Prime Minister would put a communion wafer in his pocket, which says so much more about the complainers than the PM.

So apparently I'm not who you think I am. Plus, that has not answered my question above. You have a couple times posted comments which only make sense if all opposition is from typical left wing complainers, which is not true.

Hunter v. Southam (1984) – "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a purposive document. Its purpose is to guarantee and to protect, within the limits of reason, the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms it enshrines…(S.8) guarantees a broad and general right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure…(and the) guarantee is vague and open…. I would be wary of foreclosing the possibility that the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure might protect interests beyond the right of privacy, but for purposes of the present appeal I am satisfied that its protections go at least that far."

R. v. Plant (1993) – "The purpose of s. 8 is to protect against intrusion of the state on an individual's privacy."

R. v. Duarte (1990) – "Privacy may be defined as the right of the individual to determine when, how, and to what extent he or she will release personal information. "

The point I was making is that the Courts refer to s.8 as a general right to privacy. So, if a team of bureaucrats went around door to door, for example, and randomly asked citizens to list all of their sexual partners, or something equally intrusive, under the threat of jail time for refusing to answer that question, I am almost positive s.8 would be engaged, regardless of the government's purpose (that is, whether it was related to law enforcement or not).

Obviously, the issue arises most often in the case of law enforcement. But it also comes up in other sitautions where there is no grounds whatsoever to believe that a crime is being or has been committed, such as at border crossings, for example, or with a tax return, in which you do have a privacy interest (albeit a minor one) (R. v. Jarvis).

Dagnammit. Does this mean you're not a future lawyer, either? I have the utmost respect for your lawyerly "making stuff up" skills, but I also assumed you'd been studying this stuff at an accredited law school. ;-)

Don't forget too, that section 7 of the Charter, the "right to life, liberty and security of the person", is often used to argue in favour of a right of privacy (and other related rights) in certain contexts.

Well, if you want to get all "technical" about it, then no, the Northwest Nunavut Vocational College of Pipefitting, Interior Design, Wedding Planning, Time Travel, and Legal Stuff isn't an "officially" accredited law school. However, we have another application pending, and fingers are crossed – plus, the 2009 rejection letter didn't include either "haha" or "ROFLMAO" in the text for once, so that's pretty encouraging.

Since it will no longer be attached to your name…who cares?

Ted – great reply, and as is often the case with reasonable people, we're probably closer on the issue than would be apparent from our original comments. My point was, as Jarvis points out, that the right to privacy is context specific, and doesn't depend necessarily on whether or not it might result in a criminal or regulatory prosecution. The purposive analysis that the courts engage in, from my understanding, lead them to declare rights which seem on a normal reading narrow to be very broad indeed. Thus, as you quite correctly point out, the vast majority (and perhaps all, to date, I don't know) of s.8 cases have at least some tangential relation to the potential of state sanctions, for obvious reasons. I tried to point out with my 'sexual partners' analogy that they would likely expand that definition if it seemed necessary.

And, upon closer reflection, I must agree that there would be no chance of a successful s.8 claim regarding the census. I'd like to think that my original point was that it was within the ambit of s.8, in that it engages a 'right to privacy', but it would be upheld as infinitely reasonable in light of the government interest in the information and the very limited privacy interest in rooms per house, although I may have overstepped in making that point.

Furthermore, I always operate under the assumption that if there's a law/regulation/practice that has been in place for more than a decade and hasn't been challenged yet, it's because there isn't even a flimsy case upon which a challenge could rest. In other words, if no one has challenged the census as an invasion of privacy, it's probably because it falls precisely on the point of the spectrum you've identified.

But yes, these types of conversations, to me, exhibit the occasional usefulness of these comment boards. While I often tend to think I know something, the immediate reaction of others forces me to actually prove that I know it, or alternatively accept that I was wrong, and I normally develop a more nuanced understanding of an issue in both cases.