censuslessness

Leah McLaren wrote an interesting article this week. No, really. I know, I'm surprised, too. Anyway, the point of her article is to flip Churchill's old saying about liberals, conservatives, hearts and brains on its head. She suggests that those under 30 are just naive and those over 30 are in denial, and she posits a "support your team" sports mentality to politics.

I find this interesting in light of the recent census debate. The same people who rail at Facebook for violating privacy concerns are now criticizing the government for cutting back on the long-form census for concerns of privacy. It seems to me that this is not an ideological issue at all, but a political one, in the sense that for a certain crowd, anything Harper does must be bad. But let's look at what would happen if the mandatory long-form census would be replaced by a similar, voluntary form.

The first possibility is that nothing would change. 20% Canadians get the long form. So that means instead of obliging that many Canadians to fill it out, StatsCan would need to find that many willing participants. I'm betting they could, especially considering the outcry, and the plan to distribute the voluntary form to 33% of the population. So if that's the case, what changes?

Well, certainly, the quality of the data changes. If people are self-selecting to fill out this form, that creates a whole new set of people, and all the data that is returned is only from that set. So anyone who is of the opinion that the long form census is invasive would not be represented. Is this so bad?

Objectively speaking, yes. But partisans might think twice before raining hate down on this decision. If more "liberal"-minded folks fill out the census, then they will be over-represented in all those important stats StatsCan is collecting. All those businesses that supposedly rely on the census data will now be pushed to provide services for what they perceive to be a more liberal Canada. Interesting...

Another use for the data is supposedly to find low-income areas and target services there, for example in-school breakfast programs. To suggest that a long-form census is required to figure this out is silly. You can determine needy kids in other ways. For example, check the real estate prices, or renters vs owners in the area. You can rely on the schools to determine who is in need. There will be gaps of course, but wouldn't it be better to have a gap where a school fails to identify a need because they just don't care, rather than a gap created by numbers, where an arbitrary household income determines the cut-off for help? I guess it is six of one, a half dozen of the other, as there will always be gaps and there will always be limited funds for such things.

My points are simple. 1) changing the long-form census to voluntary would not necessarily limit information for StatsCan, 2) it might benefit the political "team" that is criticizing the move, and 3) there are other ways to support the programs that this data, should it be lacking (which I doubt it would), informs.

Don't get me wrong. In terms of "teams" I am certainly not Team Stephen. If anything, I'm Team Jack (or Team Gilles, but only because of those eyes!). Like everyone else over 30, I might be a little bit in denial about that, but as far as the census goes, I'll treat it like an exhibition game, not the playoffs.