Long-form census: invasive or invaluable?

Well, the answer depends on who you ask.  The plethora of researchers who are urging the government to reinstate the mandatory long-form census thinks it’s invaluable.  Turn to Stephen Harper and his messenger, Industry minister Tony Clement, and you will hear that the long-form census is invasive and inappropriate.   

Those in favour of this census include a range of interest groups, businesses, academics, statisticians, public health experts, planners, MPs of the opposition parties and a large number of concerned citizens.  Why are they in favour? For a wide variety of reasons but for the sake of brevity, here are two compelling arguments: 

1. reliability: with the introduction of a voluntary long-form census, there are grave concerns that low-income families and minorities will no longer complete the survey.  This will cause a bias in the data and therefore generalizing results to the population will be impossible. Work like Professor Skuterud’s immigration studies will come to an abrupt end.
2. government policy: having such a breadth of reliable and easily accessible Canadian household data allows for better policy formulation. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, has raised concerns that key information from the long-form census used to track economic developments and set monetary policy will be affected. 

Unlike those in favour, the select few against the long-form census only have two tenuous reasons for its removal:

1. invasion of privacy: Canadians should not have to answer such intrusive questions.  End of discussion.  The questions are probing and a continual flood of complaints are received about the census.  
2. enforcement of participation is unreasonable: threatening Canadians with jail time for not completing the survey is too extreme and is no way to ensure participation.  

Contrast the first argument with the Privacy Commissioner’s findings of only two complaints over the 2006 census and only fifty over the past twenty years.  Introduce the Liberals creation of a bill to insert the mandatory long-form census into the Statistics Act with no jail-time but a maximum fine of $500 and argument two falters as well.  

The mandatory long-form census has been removed with little to no rationale even in the face of fierce opposition.  But given the conservative’s ideology of Harper’s right and thanks for your opinion but it doesn’t matter, this isn’t a shock. Now Mr. Harper can better think without the irritating voices of Canadians as once heard through the long-form census. And finally those inferior low-income families and minorities will be muted once and for all.  Who needs reality when a distorted perception is so much more fun!