Philip Shaw

Nothing can be as boring as statistics, but we use them all the time.  One of the least enticing things I used to do as a researcher was look up Statistics Canada information.  Simply put the information seems endless and the catalogs of statistical information are very difficult to read.  However, I think everybody would agree that they are needed.  Needed yes, but are they a burning political issue, not in 1 million years.

So when Stephen Harper decided that we didn’t need the long form census to be mandatory anymore, I didn’t shudder in my boots.  Sure, you can make some very good arguments that’s a bad idea but as a burning political issue its zero.  I have been amazed over the past few weeks that some in our national media have made such a big deal of it.  People don’t care about the long form census; they care about their jobs, lives and personal well being.

There will still be a long form census; it now though will be voluntary.  The argument against making it voluntary has to do with all the good information that good statistics give us.  For instance as a student many many years ago, I could go to the basement of the University of Guelph and find out just about anything.  That information helped businesses and government manage trends, develop a policy and maybe even create a few jobs.  So making it voluntary will simply skew that information.  Critics will say the world will not be the same without the good statistical information garnered from a mandatory long form census.

The problem I see is not necessarily the end result of that policy change but more on why it was changed.  There have been many in the media over the last few weeks that have said that Stephen Harper is going back to his reform, libertarian roots looking at the census as an intrusion on personal liberty.  I don’t really think that is true and I have a hard time believing he did that to satisfy his political base.  So the question at the end of the day is why did he do it anyway?

It confounds me because just as there will not be much of a political cost to the decision to end the long-form census, what is the political upside?  I don’t see a thing.  It’s like the Prime Minister has taken a cup of water out of the Sydenham River and at the end of the day, what difference does it make?   None.  The question is, why make that decision when all you’re going to get is criticized?

I don’t know the answer to that question but what I do question is why the Prime Minister and the Conservative party sometimes step out in front of the bus and make unnecessary, almost bizarre decisions they don’t need to.  The long form census decision is one there have been others.   Sometimes I think the Conservatives are so bored with Michael Ignatieff and his Liberals, they have meetings to decide who’s going to throw the pop bottle through the greenhouse.

I don’t know Stephen Harper, although I did have an opportunity to chat with him once for almost half an hour.  I consider him to be a very smart guy and a politician who has learned much about his game, mostly from the great Liberal political master, Jean Chretien.  He operates in a political environment where it is almost impossible to garner a majority government but is also almost impossible for him to lose his own government.  So politically he acts like a master of what he wants to do, and then suddenly we get somebody throwing paint against a white piano in the form of the voluntary long form census.  What’s the upside to that?

Prime Minister Harper and his cabinet members would surely have their reasons.  The long form census decision is one thing but in my opinion if these things continue, eventually it’s going to catch up with them.  You might remember the 2004 election campaign.  Opposition leader Stephen Harper was doing pretty well in the race against Paul Martin.  Then, for whatever reason opposition leader Stephen Harper said on national TV that Prime Minister Paul Martin was soft on child pornography!  You could almost hear the air leaving the Conservative’s election balloon.  Is one of the most bizarre things I had ever heard a Canadian politician accusing a sitting Prime Minister of.

The census form is not in the same league as that.  However to me there is a consistent pattern.  One of these days if it continues Stephen Harper and his Conservatives will go too far and makes some unexpected bizarre statement or policy change burying them when all they had to do was remain silent.  The clock is ticking.  Michael Ignatieff, all you have to do is wait.