The Mumpsimus Blog site: The Mumpsimus Blog site -> The Long Form Kiss Goodnight

You'd think, from reading the media reports on Canadians' opposition to the government over the Long Form Census that Stephen Harper's Conservatives were taking governance lessons from Collingwood Council. As in: Governance 101: How to Ignore Public Opinion.

This week, an Angus Reid poll showed 52% of respondents wanted the government to restore the Long Form Census, and only 27% thought it was a good idea to abolish it. But the government blindly pushes forward, calling the Long Form "intrusive" and determined to do away with it (even though Statistics Canada's top statistician resigned over that move).

In the Age of Information, our 21st century, information is power, it's a tool, it's an essential component of our lives and it's necessary for us to form policy, plans, studies and set goals.

Except, of course, among some small-c conservative folks who fear information because it might force them to come to grips with notions like the earth rotating around the sun, a spherical earth, evolution and a planet older than 10,000 years. Some of whom, it seems are in the Conservative caucus.

Instead of requiring that small group of select Canadians who receive it to fill out the Long Form, Harper's anti-information gang suggest we will instead complete a "voluntary" form. But the whole point of the Long Form is that it gathered data from a set percentage of people and that allowed the statisticians to build comprehensive models.

Sure, a voluntary form may be completed by a larger percentage - with the same likelihood that pigs will suddenly start to fly - but the greater probability is that a smaller (much smaller) group will fill it in, thus invalidating decades of StatsCan's work in these fields.

Industry Minister Tony Clement is reported on the CBC as noting there wasn't a "micron of difference" in his attitude towards scrapping this useful tool and the Prime Minister's. What is surprising is not that anyone would find a difference of opinion between Harper and one of his Clone Army, but rather that one of them might actually understand the term "micron."

However, in an interview with Clement, in England on "ministerial business," the minister actually said that, while he did not personally consider long-form questions intrusive, he had heard from Canadians who were "...concerned about other questions, like whether someone in the household has a mental or physical incapacity, they're concerned about questions about the characteristics of their commute to work."

So a major change in policy comes about because the minister heard concerns from a handful of people about questions the majority of Canadians consider trivial in comparison to the importance of the information gathered. And most of us are shaking our heads wondering how a question about our commute to work is intrusive when we answer much more personal questions on any Web site or magazine form offering us a chance to win a dream vacation. Hell, most us eagerly put more personal information on our FaceBook pages than the Long Form asks.

Liberal House Leader, Ralph Goodale, captured it very concisely when he called it a "...general dumbing down of government" that would threaten basic services Canadians rely on, including hospitals, transit systems, jobless benefits and schools.

The NDP's Charlie Angus was more caustic when he accused the Conservatives of, as the CBC noted, "importing the anti-census language of the "fringe" of the U.S. Republican Party" - the Tea Party - "to attack an "extremely credible" organization." Harper's move echoes the Tea Party's rabid attack against the US Census.

The Toronto Star reported that the Canadian Medical Association accused the Tories of 'putting ideology ahead of "evidence-based decision making" and charges the government is taking an "uninformed approach to public policy."' "Without this information," the editorial noted, "Canada is stripped of an important resource to guide social interventions and investments to improve the health and well-being of Canadians."

So in the end, ideology - a frighteningly fundamentalist and Luddite ideology - will deprive Canadians of a powerful and increasingly important tool that helps us shape public policy. Sara Palin would be proud of Stephen.