I am posting this on behalf of a colleague from Victoria B.C., Ian Faris, an employee with Statistics Canada for 20 years, and now a research analyst and member of the Canadian Social Data Consortium. The data consortium is organized to “liberate” census and related data at a modest fee for city planners, public health bodies, school boards, health districts, […]

Are there good alternatives to the mandatory census long-form questionnaire to collect the information that we need? Last Saturday CBC’s The House had a sparkling section on the census which offered some thoughts from a Danish statistician and the views of Canada’s longest serving Chief Statistician, Ivan Fellegi. On Tuesday Tavia Grant’s superb article in the Globe and Mail looked […]

Professor Emeritus at University of British Columbia, William Stanbury, has produced a handy treatise on coercion, published online in the Hill Times this week. Stanbury focused his career as a professor of economics on strategic decision-making in business, including government relations, competition rules, regulations and other public policies that strengthen business performance. His insightful summary of the arguments on coercion […]

Anybody that has been watching the unfolding of the census dust-up could be forgiven for no longer knowing where to place their bets. Are the Conservatives really going to go through with this disruptive measure, or are there still ways out? The answer is yes, a successful resolution is still possible (read on). But nothing is guaranteed and, wow, what […]

Once again Stephen Harper has charted a course for the nation that drops the ball in the provinces’ and territories’ lap. Since forming government in 2006, the Harper Conservatives have withdrawn federal presence from social policy, health policy, and climate change while ramping up defence, security and trade. The cut to the GST was less about putting a little more […]

The following statement was released this morning. The key point is that the mandatory long form census should remain for 2011, and some changes are proposed moving forward including removing the never-used penalty of prison for non compliance. Seeking Solutions The National Statistics Council, the senior, external advisory group appointed by the government of Canada to advise the Chief Statistician, […]

Stephen Harper’s 1991 master’s thesis used census data to make his case about “political business cycles” and he even noted how disruptive changes in methodology could be for long-term analysis in understanding how Canadian political behaviour changed over time. He ran a model to show the links between variables such as unemployment and changes in government. The unemployment data is […]

A highly regarded economist and business consultant sent me a link to his view of the significance and consequence of the Government’s decision to axe the census long-form questionnaire. Elegantly concise and to the point, it reads like a cheat sheet for an exam on why Census long-form information is important, from the on-the-ground business and public service delivery POV. […]

The resignation of Chief Statistician Munir Sheik has far-reaching political consequences, and may be the game-changer in this ongoing census saga. But it is the extreme conclusion of a far more serious and consequential development – the politicization of the public service. Read Alex Himelfarb on the topic, a former Clerk of the Privy Council (Canada’s top public servant) and […]

A great piece of political analysis by Paul Saurette of Ottawa U  – from the Mark http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1907-when-smart-parties-make-stupid-decisions?page=1

There aren’t many stories like this one. You have to go back half a century, to Diefenbaker and Coyne, to find a parallel. Then too, a Prime Minister increasingly viewed as overly controlling insisted on an unworkable policy until the Governor of the Bank of Canada had no choice but to step down, in an attempt to preserve both his […]

I am a member of the National Statistics Council, an expert advisory group to Statistics Canada. We meet twice a year as a group with the Chief Statistician and senior Statscan staff. The members are a varied group of expert users of data. The Chair of the Council, Ian McKinnon,  released this statement to the media last night. STATEMENT ON […]

Last week someone sent me an email with a subject line that read “Emergency Singalong” They had watched the evolution of the census story with dismay and decided it was time to turn things around. Cleverly rewriting the lyrics to Garry and the Playboy’s 1960s hit Count Me In, a group assembled at his house last Friday. The rest, as […]

Dr. Bill Stanbury — a regular contributor to the Hill Times, professor emeritus at UBC, economist and self-described as centre-right — has urged me to work with him to compile a list of every organization who has taken a public stand on opposing the government’s decision to ax the census long-form questionnaire, and replace it with a voluntary household survey. […]

While Canadians tried to talk census sense to their rulers, here’s what the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, had to say about the importance of the census on Sunday July 11: “Population data helps leaders and policy-makers to make informed decisions about policies and programmes to reduce poverty and hunger, and advance education, health and gender equality,” The […]

Today a truly surprising assembly of organizations – definitely not a coalition – made a group request for a meeting with the Minister who has been put in charge of executing the decision to ax the Census long-form questionnaire. Their objective? “We understand that the far-reaching impacts of this decision may not have been fully anticipated and we respectfully request […]