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Canada Reinstates Mandatory Census, To Delight of Social Scientists (sciencemag.org)
Eloking writes with news that the government of Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be reinstating the mandatory long-form census that the outgoing government had ended. Science reports: "The new Canadian government today announced it would restore the country's mandatory long-form census. 'Our plan for open and fair government starts today with restoring the long-form census,' said Navdeep Bains, minister of innovation, science and economic development, speaking in Ottawa alongside Jean-Yves Duclos, minister of families, children and social development. 'We're focused on good evidence-based policies.' Bains said that Statistics Canada would be able to meet the 2 May deadline to roll out the 2016 census, which is conducted every 5 years, and that there would be no additional costs to making it mandatory. He confirmed that residents who fail to fill out the census could face criminal prosecution, an issue that contributed to the decision by the Harper government to make the 2011 census voluntary."
Oh, yes - making policy and decisions based on evidence as opposed to ideology - wild indeed. I'm buckled in tightly with a 5 point harness; I'm ready for this ride.
Ian Ameline
I think he is referring to the legal requirement to tell the government everything they want to know. But maybe not. I don't really know what's on the Canadian long form. If it is like the US it is mostly bunch of stuff the government already has access to (like income), but are too lazy to go get, and a bunch of stupid stuff like how many bathrooms are in your house.
No, their plan actually calls for making evidence based policy instead of simply deciding what they want the facts to be.
You know, collect information and use it to make decisions, instead of just making decisions based on ideology which has nothing to do with reality.
But, hey, go live in your mountain cabin and continue to believe this stupid crap.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Take your tinfoil hats off already. I work for a civic agency where my primary role is to provide the decision makers with the right data necessary to make informed decisions. We, along with many other branches that serve the community, were severely handcuffed when Harper removed the long form and made the short form voluntary. The data is often used to help identify where focus and resources are best placed so that the taxpayers we serve get the most bang for their buck. Believe it or not, many public servants do understand who pays the bills.
Ehmm RTFF much?... It's 40 pages to fill in per 5 persons (if more than 5 persons live on the same address, you have to call in for a supplemental form). Which would make it about 8 pages per person. Roughly half of the questions should be skipped for persons aged below 15 and most questions are either 'mark the box' or writing names or amounts. It's not like you have to write a 40 page essay.... Questions are about:
-Inquiring the number of persons residential at the dwelling (the form gives detailed information about who to include and who not).
-Some basic information about each of these persons (Name, DoB, sex, marital status and relationships).
-Ethnic background of each person and language capabilities, detailed.
-Level of education and the type and amount of labour performed by each person over 15. Includes voluntary and unpaid labour (like household chores).
-The state and ownership situation of the dwelling the form is sent to.
Oh, and there is a page for comments.
Except for that last page, everything in the form seems to me to be very relevant for government decision making. At least, and I am generalizing here, if I'm well enough informed about what 'usual Canadians' consider proper government decision making. I'm Dutch, so I do not know the details, but I do read about what's going on in other countries than my own and that includes what populations usually expect from their governments.
Then, again, I can understand why some questions on that form would be highly objectionable to 'usual U.S. Americans'. And I might be wrong but most comments I see here are not those of Canadians... The impression I usually get from the U.S. is that you don't like to let your government meddle in affairs like basic health care, integration of minorities, housing regulations, public welfare or anything that touches income (taxes, minimum wage). And that's what many questions in that census are about. So, I'm not surprised I see so many negative comments here...
Just a backgrounder ...
For the past 9+ years in Canada, we had a Conservative government (right wing ideologues).
They wanted to eliminate inconvenient truths that are against their ideologies, so they started a war on data and a war on science.
Here is a recent TV program explaining how despicable this is:
War on Data
War on Science
The new liberal government promised evidence based policies. One thing they promised is to reinstate the long form census which the Conservatives axed on false premises back in 2010.
So this is just undoing the damage done by right wingers ...
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The same Conservatives who passed Bill 51 to spy on all citizens and directly gather the information? Yes they really must love their privacy to vote in the most anti-privacy government in Canadian history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism