Canadian Census Blog
Munir Sheikh, the chief statistician of Statistics Canada abruptly quit, resigned, retired or was fired from his government job this past week. It appears that he actually quit in protest to the government’s position in abolishing the mandatory long-form census questionnaire. Sheikh issued a statement on leaving his position indicating that a mandatory long form census questionnaire was necessary to obtain accurate census data.
Number one is that Mr. Sheikh politicized his government job by issuing that statement. Government employees cannot play partisan politics with their government position. They must follow the wishes of the government of the day or pay the penalty. Mr. Sheikh deserves to be penalized for his very public opposition to the change in government policy over the long-form census questionnaire.
Number two is that Mr. Sheikh played willfully into the hands of the partisan media like the Globe and Mail, CBC and other elitist groups in Canada that consider themselves Royalty. Dam the people.
While other countries are moving to abolish any kind of a census, the media and elitist groups, unrepresentative of the people of Canada, are bulldozing their way to manipulating census opinion by half truths and outright lies.
All of the citizens of Canada should be educated as to the questions asked in the long-form census questionnaire. A good start for the media is to publish the questions asked in the last long-form census and then let the people decide if the questions deserved to be answered.
The last long-form basically asks you to reveal every financial detail about your household and your employment history and even goes further by asking your permission to access your income tax return. The media is purposely leaving this aspect of the long-form from their discussion of the pros and cons of the value of the information.
Rather, the media is misleading the public by referring to unimportant questions on the long-form that ask for information about how many rooms you have in your house and what time do you leave for work in the morning.
The elitist groups in Canada and the media have to level with the public. The provincial and municipal governments already have more than sufficient information in their hands to make informed and enlightened decisions on various aspects of local development without financial information from the long-form census.
Further, we are equal under the laws of this country and if 20 % of the population was required to answer questions in the previous long-form census, than in the up and coming census, 100% of the population must answer the long-form. Otherwise, this becomes a Charter Issue.
And Statistics Canada have stated that your in-depth revelation of financial data is secure in the hands of 6000 Stats Can Employees and to the elitists that buy the information from Stats Can.
Bull:
Bill O’Malley
