Access to information
The census issue is related to other recent controversies over the appropriate boundary between public and private in the provision and control of knowledge (Census Critics Just Want Easy Ride, Clement Says - Aug. 6). The commercial provision of data has become a very large and internationalized business, but markets can fail to provide some types of information, as was dramatically evident in the 2008 financial crisis. The Conservative government's first effort to rework Canada's Copyright Act was widely criticized for tipping the balance too much toward private control of knowledge, and in response it initiated a second, more consultative process.
Access to information is crucial to our democracy and our economy. Not everyone can afford to pay commercial providers for information, and not all information can be produced for a profit.
Tony Porter, professor of political science, McMaster University, Hamilton
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Industry Minister Tony Clement's latest statement to support the Harper government's decision to abandon the mandatory long-form census is revealing for three unintended reasons. First, he actually admits that the data collected are of the highest quality and are valuable to Canadians. Second, he is aghast that government work should benefit Canadians for free. And third, he doesn't seem to know about the numerous statistical reports and publications published for a user fee by Statistics Canada. How much weaker can his position become?
Rey Carr, Victoria
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Following Tony Clement's logic, the solution to the alleged "free rider" problem is to continue to give statistics users a free ride, but with poorer data and an extra cost to taxpayers of $30-million a year.
Joe Frankovic, Toronto
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I have always regarded Tony Clement as astute and well-meaning. His latest comments on dropping the mandatory long-form census, though, leave me dumbfounded. He describes the host of provincial and municipal governments, and untold numbers of social agencies, as having somehow inappropriately gotten "a good deal." With respect, that is what the federal government is for: to carry out good governance at a national level that helps our country move forward effectively and efficiently.
For all of these agencies to collect this data independently, statistical reliability will be lost and it will be a huge waste of money - including a lot of money that comes directly from the federal government.
David Keegan, Calgary
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I am somewhat amazed at the sheer number of letters The Globe and Mail has continued to print in support of the census in its current form. Where are the people who don't like being threatened with jail time if they don't fess up to all sorts of intimate details, on paper, on time? There are plenty out there, I think, or the Prime Minister's Office wouldn't be so foolish as to suggest they be appeased.
Call me retrograde, but I don't like being threatened, even if it somehow helps us as a nation to know how many of us might need whatever it might be in the future. The truth is that for anyone who fills out a tax return, has a health card or pays municipal taxes, one level of government or another has more information on you, your family, your income, your habits and the minutiae of your health than most of us would be comfortable contemplating.
Sara Alexander, Oakville, Ont.
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It is difficult to decide which is most dispiriting about the Harper government's intransigence over the mandatory census long form: the sight of a cabinet minister trotting out increasingly silly excuses for bad policy, or the fact that this country is being led by a Prime Minister so lacking in self-confidence that he cannot admit he has made a mistake.
Martha Musgrove, Ottawa
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The key statistics that the federal government itself depends on rely on the mandatory census. The inflation rate and the unemployment rate are both based on voluntary surveys. But those surveys are not representative of the population - they under-sample the poor, for example. To get accurate measures from the surveys, we need to reweight them. To get accurate weights, we need a complete census. (We can't know by how much we are under-counting the poor if we never count everyone in the first place.)
So statistics like the unemployment rate and inflation rate, which are crucial for what federal government departments and the Bank of Canada do, depend on the census. Even holding aside the ridiculous argument that everyone should pay to have their own statistics, the federal government itself relies on the mandatory census.
David Green, department of economics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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According to Tony Clement, the Conservative government doesn't want to play the "heavy" any more. So why does it want to build more prisons?
Maria Lahiffe, Ottawa
A bold performance
The Prime Minister's Office might be reminded of Hamlet's advice to the actors about the purpose of a play, which was and is "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." But sadly PMO spokesman Andrew MacDougall steps forth boldly (in the great tradition of many a reactionary politician before him) where fools fear to tread (PMO Draws Producer's Ire - Aug. 6).
I guess in the PMO's theatre world, there would be no public monies used to support plays about Louis Riel, William Lyon Mackenzie, Gandhi, Michael Collins, George Washington, the Winnipeg General Strike, the Mac-Paps, etc.
And there goes my new musical, "Making Senses of the Census."
David Ferry, Toronto
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Interesting to see the PMO branching out into literary criticism, though it's customary to actually see a play before reviewing it.
Sturla Gunnarsson, Toronto
Politically expedient?
Several U.S. senators are quoted as expressing concern about the amount of toxic dispersants used to clean up the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, given the effects of these chemicals on plankton (BP Marks Blowout Milestone - Business, Aug. 5). One can only hope that the senators' new-found affection for plankton will see the passage of legislation that reduces the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the U.S., given the effects of ocean acidification caused by carbon dioxide on plankton.
Larry Hughes, professor, Energy Research Group, Dalhousie University, Halifax
A horror story
It seems Stieg Larsson's impassioned impatience with willful blindness to violence against women was inspired by Canadian practices, not Swedish ones. To think the one victim who escaped from Robert Pickton was treated with him in the same hospital (Revelations About Pickton's 1997 Arrest Fuel Calls For Inquiry - Aug. 6). How obtuse are our police? We need a public inquiry into why our truth is stranger than Swedish fiction.
Beatrice van Dijk, Toronto
Rights vs. rights
Re I Am A Real Mother (Facts & Arguments - Aug. 5) and Ford's Same-Sex Marriage Stand Raises Furor (Aug. 5): Where do people get off thinking they can inquire about and criticize the composition of other people's families? Not everyone can - or wants to - have biological children, or desires marriage with someone of the opposite sex. I am tired of hearing people who actively fight against equality espouse what a "real" family looks like.
Pastor Wendell Brereton, whose views have been endorsed by Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford, needs to understand that there are no restrictions on the kinds of families that make up the ethical fibres of "a healthy democratic civilization." People need to focus their business on what goes on within their own families, and stop projecting their racist and/or homophobic images of what families should look like on others.
Julia O'Byrne, Toronto
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Rob Ford should have the right to publicly state a personal belief, as he did on the issue of same-sex marriage. It is astonishing that a political figure who supports traditional marriage is vilified by his election opponents, both gay and heterosexual, because his beliefs are seen as homophobic and offensive to gay-rights supporters.
What hypocrisy by these candidates in a democratic election campaign for the mayor of Toronto, the so-called city of inclusiveness, to verbally assault Mr. Ford's right to freedom of belief and freedom of speech on an issue of personal morality. A true democracy respects and defends the right of individual opinion and dissent that is expressed peacefully.
John R. Merrick, Markham, Ont.
A (super)model witness
In her appearance before the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, supermodel Naomi Campbell testified testily that it was an "inconvenience" for her to attend the proceedings ('I Didn't Really Want To Be Here' - Aug. 6). The global community must heed her words and reflect on our future approach to fighting crimes against humanity. Surely when the quest for justice inconveniences a supermodel, we have gone too far.
Mitchell Gray, Vancouver