Todd Houston, Ironman
Various Contrivances
Matt's Internet Wunderkammer
Smoothies
Lake Okanagan
Airplane
How in the world did we get to the point that filling out the long form census is just too much to ask? I frankly cannot remember if I, personally, have ever had to do the long form. I’m old enough that I probably did and I hate forms enough that I may have blocked it from memory – but it simply cannot be too great a price to pay for being a Canadian citizen and helping to ensure that all citizens share in its benefits. And my guess – the majority of Canadians would agree, even if, like me, they hate the questions.
I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion. This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census.
It can not.
Under the circumstances, I have tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister.
This is a great series on The Agenda. I really enjoyed the vision of progress that Rifkin describes in this episode.
To turn statistical methodology into a political controversy, a government has to really screw up. But to make statisticians shriek and flap their arms like wounded albatrosses, to cause policy wonks to turn purple with rage, to compel retired civil servants to dispense with a lifetime of discretion and denounce the government’s gobsmacking jackassery to reporters … Well, that’s something special.
Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller firms and no leverage - a world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks, and in which companies are born and die every day without making the news.
MP Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister, says that the trial will be the first of a child soldier in modern history and that such a trial is prohibited under international humanitarian law. Any thought that something like this might cause the Harper government to reconsider is, of course, risible. These honourable men rebuff their own high court verdicts. They rebuff the will of Parliament – when not shutting it down – on Afghan detainee documents. For them, international law is of trifling concern.
So, no new tax; no money flowing back to government to spend; no vast new bureaucracy springing up to burden the taxpayer (Stewardship Ontario was, until about a year ago, a virtual organization, and now has all of 20 staff), and really, a pretty smart program that is the first of its kind in Canada.
A staple of collective self-awareness, the census is our national mirror. Arbitrarily and without debate or justification, Conservatives are blurring Canada’s reflected image by poking a stick in the eye of knowledge.
Rice Krispies
