Letter Submitted via Email to the Globe and Mail on July 22, 2010
Your editorial on Mr. Sheikh’s resignation was very correct. One of your commentators, Mr. Spector, was not as accurate. Mr. Sheikh did the right thing at the right time. I do not think it is appropriate to criticize Mr. Sheikh for not resigning earlier. His job was to minimize the damage. None of us would have expected him to support internally the Tories strategy. When it was implied that he did, he correctly resigned. For that, he is to be respected and not criticized.
It is terrifying how ill informed the census discussion has been. The long form is required to provide a good statistical base for the analysis of policy and business decisions. For example, most of us use the industrial and occupational data in the Labour Force Survey on a very regular basis (i.e., monthly). The quality of that data is directly dependent on the long form. The individual information is not important except in that it supports accurate aggregates available for small local areas such as smaller cities, e.g. Brantford etc. Accurate data facilitate good decisions for business and government.
The coercive element of the census is the price of citizenship. The American Community Survey is also mandatory in the US for reasons of efficient accurate cost-effective data. We do not have compulsory registration, identity cards or other forms of personal tracking in Canada as in many European countries. As I write this letter, I am in Germany where the first portion of the automobile license identifies the city of registration and where identity cards are a requirement. Those restrictions are considered appropriate for persons living here. A mandatory census is a much better tradeoff for good government.
In terms of privacy, Canadians routinely surrender privacy to their merchants through loyalty cards or even electronic purchases (remember tjx/winners). Statistics Canada, unlike far too many retailers, has never had a privacy breach and goes to extreme lengths to see that none outside of census operations sees the personal records. As a heavy data user, I am extremely aware of the costs and complications of their privacy protection policy. The personal data are not even available to Mr. Clement's ministry. The privacy concerns are trumped up by the Tories to appeal to the lowest common denominator of voter which is their constituency.
Going ahead with the destruction of the census-based data systems will result in enormous gaps. We will not be able to compare data appropriately. None of us will be comfortable comparing observations of a new survey for several cycles. In other words, we will have enough experience to judge the quality of the proposed National Household Survey in perhaps 20 years. Since it is a very expensive process to introduce a survey, far more than any savings from dropping the long form, the Tories should stop this nonsense now. If the Tories do not revisit this decision, it can only confirm their status as inappropriate managers of our country.