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 […]
Read moreDr. 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. […]
Read moreSince Stephen Harper and David Cameron seem to be on the same wavelength, and the UK thinks it can trash census and turn to isources like credit records for its information needs, the story below on privacy, from Alberta, may be of possible interest. Report of an Investigation into the Security, Collection and Retention of Personal Information TJX Companies Inc. […]
Read moreWhile 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 […]
Read moreToday 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 […]
Read moreThere seems to be a consensus that the Bank of Canada will raise its target interest rate tomorrow. I thought that last month’s rate hike was premature, so I see no reason for another hike this month. The argument for higher interest rates is that they are needed to ward off future inflation (even though inflation is currently below the […]
Read moreA few years ago an important study, by Marc Frenette, David Green and Kevin Milligan, Revisiting Recent Trends in Canadian After-Tax Income Inequality Using Census Data, was published by Statscan. It did not get much profile but its implications for the current census debacle are startling. The authors summarize: … [E]xisting data sources may miss changes in the tails of […]
Read moreThe Globe and Mail has allowed their poll about Census “intrusiveness†to stand for the third day. By 10 a.m. on Sunday over 32,000 people had registered their vote with the newspaper. Undoubtedly this is some kind of record for the daily Globe poll, which got 222 votes for the previous one. The question is highly leading – “Do you […]
Read moreJeffrey Simpson’s column yesterday nailed it. There is only one reason this Census situation is so senselessly white-hot: the government’s position. Its radical ideology and stunning stubbornness have raised the stakes alarmingly high. There must be plenty of Conservatives who are recoiling at the shenanigans of these so-called Conservatives. Every time Tony Clement and the Prime Minister’s spokesthingy says “coercive†[…]
Read moreYesterday a CCPA board member alerted my Exec Director that the Globe and Mail poll for the day was on the Census, noting that, very early in the day, the poll was running 2 votes yes for every vote no. The polling question: Do you think the long-form census questionnaire is an intrusion on the privacy of Canadians? It’s a […]
Read moreI was wondering where our fellow researchers and analysts stood on this topic. They were unusually silent, even though I had invited them to participate in a group process requesting a meeting with the Minister and PM, a group which, by the way, seemed to cross all boundaries and divides. I stand corrected. http://www.canada.com/Fraser+Institute+dismisses+need+mandatory+long+form+census/3287248/story.html Quite by accident on my way […]
Read moreThe Conservatives apparently think that it is deeply intrusive for the state to count your bedrooms through the mandatory long form census. “Asked to explain why this matters to the core Conservative constituency, one senior Tory strategist said, on background: “It’s all about the nanny state. Why is it mandatory to tell the government how many bedrooms are in your […]
Read moreJewish, Evangelical groups oppose census change http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Politics/20100715/census-backlash-100715/ And this just in: Stephen’s cat Cheddar opposes the changes too. He’s cheesed! A colleague notes:”If you have the Jews, the Evangelicals, the provinces, growing parts of the business lobby, the academics, Quebec, the City of Calgary, the Community Foundations, the United Ways, the CLC, etc, there’s not a lot left other than […]
Read moreSHEESH! I’ve never seen anything like this, have you? My fave – Kelly McParland’s Full Comment, at the bottom. Hilarious and right on the money. THURSDAY CLIPPINGS “NEWS HOUR FINAL†Global BC and Global Ontario Broadcast Date: Thursday July 15 2010 The Harper government says it’s making changes to the census based on widespread privacy complaints but as Shirlee Engel […]
Read moreThere has been a persistent drumbeat in the American business press about corporations accumulating cash. The argument is that, while corporations are making solid profits now, they are not investing in the US for fear of anti-business policies in the future. Obama has allegedly spooked corporate America into hoarding cash rather than investing. To test that story, I looked at […]
Read moreThe Honourable Tony Clement Minister of Industry House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 Dear Minister Clement: Re: Labour Market Information and the 2011 Long-Form Census Questionnaire The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) requests that you, as the Minister responsible for Statistics Canada, revisit your decision to cancel the mandatory long-form census questionnaire. By discontinuing the long-form census and replacing it […]
Read moreToday’s Globe and Mail features an article about the University of Toronto’s plan to turn “to the private sector to solve their campus housing problems” for students. In particular, the article refers to a plan whereby the U of T would become “the first university in Canada to erect a large tower offsite with private money.” According to the article, […]
Read moreWhenever the stock market falls, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow reliably blames the Obama administration’s allegedly anti-business policies. But when the market was rising on Obama’s watch, Kudlow generally did not talk about it. On tonight’s show, he took a different tack. He repeatedly asserted that the market has recently rallied not only on strong corporate profits, but also because Tim Geithner announced (on […]
Read moreThe BC government has released its final estimates of the cost of staging the 2010 Winter Games, highlighting the problems this government has with telling the truth (other examples include the 2009 pre-election fudge-it budget, and the HST). The Tyee reports: British Columbia’s government spent $325 million more on the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics than originally promised. The $925.2 […]
Read moreUnder the “we told you so” category, I am filing the BC public accounts for 2009/10. The province closed the year with a deficit of $1.8 billion. As Will McMartin comments in The Tyee: … B.C.’s public accounts for the fiscal year 2009/2010 conclusively prove that the pre-election fiscal plan foisted on British Columbians by Premier Gordon Campbell and his […]
Read moreThe front page of today’s Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition) proclaims, “Supercorp is dead.†The story goes on to note, “many government insiders have suggested that opponents of a potential deal got too much of a head start on framing the issue.†Indeed, this blog got a head start framing the issue back in December, when The Globe reported that […]
Read moreOn a weekend getaway to Washington state, I was alarmed at how much cheaper gas prices are south of the border. Typically, we paid $3 per gallon, whereas the price in Vancouver upon our return was $1.16 per litre, which is $4.39 per gallon (with the exchange rate roughly parity over the weekend). This is an astonishingly large price difference, […]
Read moreHere’s the media round-up from over the weekend and today’s press. You will note almost all the stories are against the Harper decision to cut the Census long-form questionnaire. However the push-back-in-print has begun. Clark’s piece from the Province [BC] is an ode to libertarianism, and Ditchburn’s story for CP, “Census consensus among Conservatives”, offers some insights on where this […]
Read moreThe notion that tariffs caused the Great Depression has been repeatedly invoked in opposition to allegedly protectionist policies and to press ahead with deregulatory “free trade†deals. Also, the current collapse of international trade is sometimes cited to suggest a rising tide of protectionism today. Yesterday, Paul Krugman had an excellent post debunking the underlying claim that tariffs caused the […]
Read moreToday’s Toronto Star features an op-ed by John Cartwright, President of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. (I once had the chance to hear John speak at a press conference in Toronto and found him to be an oustanding public speaker. But I digress…) In the piece, he argues that “we” (I think he means both the Harper government and the […]
Read moreFrom strategies on austerity to shutting down public discourse, Prime Minister Harper seems to have found a new BFF at the G8 meetings. David Cameron’s new tough-as-nails coalition government is planning to scrap the Census in the U.K., which has been taken every 10 years for the past 200 years. It is viewed as “expensive and inefficient”. Unlike Canada’s decision, […]
Read moreThe sound of backlash to the government’s decision on cutting the Census long-form questionnaire continues to rumble across the country. Tuesday’s Globe and Mail published a story on the topic as well as a column by Andre Picard which was drawn primarily from the open letter on this blog. The next day the sound of outrage came from Mr. Harper’s […]
Read moreThis morning, Statistics Canada reported that employment jumped by an incredible 93,200 in June. But the total number of hours worked actually declined. In effect, less work was divided up between more workers. (By contrast, a similar employment jump in April corresponded to a large increase in hours worked.) Less Unemployment: A Central Canadian Story The advantage of dividing less […]
Read moreThe former Chief Statistician, Ivan Fellegi, who served Canada for 51 years, cannot identify any census in any country that is voluntary. From time immemorial, such is the nature of Census taking. Thus far there are only two people on public record in Canada taking a public stand against the Census and it is not because of the questions on […]
Read moreAs BC and Ontario have now started paying the HST at the till, many people may be wondering when exactly can we expect to see those jobs postings opening up. This is a good question. According to analysis commissioned by the BC government from economist Jack Mintz, titled British Columbia’s Harmonized Sales Tax: A Giant Leap in the province’s Competitiveness, […]
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