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Hanging up the shoes
It’s not a huge surprise, but it’s still big news. After 8 years, the only Finance Minister Stephen Harper has ever known and loved is calling it quits: Jim Flaherty steps down as finance minister OTTAWA – Jim Flaherty is leaving the federal cabinet after more than eight years as finance minister to prepare for […]
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Issue Management
In all the pages and pages of Census e-mails and documents released Tuesday, the excerpt above is probably the most telling. Just 2 days before the Census changes were made public, an internal Communications Plan was circulated proclaiming “These changes will not have a negative impact on the quality of the Census. Response rates and […]
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7 Weeks Later, Tony Clement Springs Into Action
Actually, his proposed changes are rather meek, designed only to avoid a court challenge: Stung by francophone anger, the Harper government is adding questions on French and English skills to the obligatory short-form 2011 census. It’s a bid to quell the linguistic minority’s fears that scrapping a longer mandatory survey will make it harder to […]
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Tony Clement: Non-mandatory with the truth
Tony Clement, on July 16th: “I asked [Statistics Canada] specifically, ‘Are you confident you can do your job?’ They said ‘If you do these extra things: the extra advertising and the extra sample size, then yes, we can do our job.’ ” […] Mr. Clement said the medical journal and other critics should trust Statistics […]
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Being Tony Clement
Tony Clement, explaining the government’s census logic: “Yeah, there are groups that are upset” about the government’s decision, Clement told reporters. “Hey, listen, they had a good deal going,” he added. “They got good, quality data and the government of Canada was the heavy.” Realizing fewer people will fill out a voluntary form, the government […]
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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Census (But Were Afraid To Ask)
The Great Census Crisis of 2010 has its first music video. It’s only a matter of time before angry mobs of statisticians take to the streets holding “I’m with Fellegi signs” and chanting “What do we want? Mandatory long form Census! When do we want? Every 5 years!”. Don’t worry, if you can’t make the […]
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"In light of today’s media coverage…"
This morning, Tony Clement gives an in depth Q & A in the Globe, where he talks about the relationship between StatsCan and the government, their role in the Census changes, and his relationship with chief statistician Munir Sheikh. Clement ends the Q & A by assuring us that both him and Mr. Sheikh will […]
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Clement to Farmers: Prepare to be Coerced
Farmers still face mandatory agricultural census Canadian farmers will still be required to fill out a questionnaire about their farming methods, even though the federal government is scrapping the mandatory long-form personal census because it says it is too intrusive. In conjunction with the regular census, Statistics Canada also surveys farmers across the country, asking […]
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As the call for state sanctioned coercion grows…
Via Aaron Wherry, a non-random sampling of opposition to the government’s plan to defile the Census: To those who oppose the government’s changes to the census you can now add the Statistical Society of Canada, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Canadian Marketing Association, the Canadian Federation of Francophone and Acadian […]
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In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world…among those who felt like it
I know this isn’t a big issue. I don’t expect facebook groups and protests in the streets over it. But, as someone who worked on the Census in the past, this really grates me: Former StatsCan head slams census decision by Tories OTTAWA – The former chief statistician of Canada says he would have quit […]