The census debate has been raging for more than a month now. My first post on the government decision to make the mandatory long-form voluntary was on June 30th. Re-reading that post I am struck by how much this debate has spun out of control. The opponents are jumping up and down in outrage for what they call a radical ideological agenda. The reality is that the reform is a very moderate one.
The important thing that has to be kept in mind, and I feel like so many people are losing sight of this, is that the government is not proposing to cut the census. The short-form will still be mandatory and refusal to fill in this form could still lead to fines or jail time.
The short-form is not as intrusive but it is still intrusive. It asks you questions about your age, your family, your ethnicity, and other basic demographic questions. The 2011 Census will then still be a ‘snap shot’ of Canada’s demographics.
I keep getting the impression that the opponents of the reform are confused. They keep defending the ‘vital’ demographic data that the census collects. We can debate how ‘vital’ this data really is, but such a debate would be abstract because that ‘vital’ data is not really being threatened.
The sort of information that won’t be gathered by coercive means in the new census is: how many rooms you have in your house, what time you get up to go to work, and which parent spends more time with their children. These are all examples presented by the government, and I have yet to hear any critic try to defend any of that as vital to the operation of government.
That is because there is no legitimate argument that any of that data is anything but of academic interest.
Some like the Western Standard have used this opportunity to engage in a debate over the legitimacy of using force to collect statistical data. This debate should not be confused with the debate over the government reform. Despite the libertarian language used by Minister Tony Clement, there is no proposal on the table to end the use of force in census collection.
Opponents of the government’s census reform should take a deep breath and tackle the issue more honestly.
