How the conservatives attempting to blur reality for corporate gain

Social capital is difficult to build, and easy to destroy. The former Conservative government demolished a big chunk of our social capital when it blew up the census, and it will take time and effort to restore it. Posting selfies with census forms can’t hurt, and just might help.

National Post 

Stephen Gordon is a professor of economics at Laval University.

Stephen Gordon: The damage the Tories did with the census won’t be easily undone

Tomorrow is Census Day, and the festivities have been underway for more than a week now: advertising campaigns, people posting selfies of their census notifications and stories of Canadians being so keen on filling out the census that they crashed the servers at Statistics Canada. It’s all a bit silly, but there’s a serious point underlying this campaign and I won’t laugh at it. The census story didn’t end with the new Liberal government’s decision to make it mandatory again.

The strongest argument against the census is that it encroaches on people’s privacy. Section Eight of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says “(e)veryone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure,” and this implies (among other things) a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy. But this is not the same thing as saying that people have an absolute right to privacy, only a “reasonable expectation.” And in any case, none of the rights in the Charter are absolute: Section One says they are all subject to “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” So the question isn’t whether or not the census is an infringement on privacy: it is. The question is whether or not this infringement is reasonable.

The (non-monetary) costs of the census cannot and should not be ignored. But neither should its benefits. One thing we’ve learned over the past six years is just how important the census really is. Even if we set aside its importance for researchers and government planners (and we shouldn’t), the census is the cornerstone for much of our knowledge economy. The census is the only random sample that can be used as a benchmark to transform biased survey data into useful information.

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/stephen-gordon-the-damage-the-tories-did-with-the-census-wont-be-easily-undone