Barrel Strength

It has not taken long for the editorialists to put their fingers on the button: are the Tories suppressing the long form census for purely ideological reasons? And I ask: what ideology? Or is this just know-nothingism?

The reason why this issue has resonated is that it goes to the issue which all sensible people must ask about any government. Do these people actually care to make fact-based policy? Or worse, are the Conservatives “ideological” in the same way that the NDP are ideological?  My feelings trump your facts: the kind of rubbish we conservatives hear so often on global warming, or any other leftward hot-button issue. Or as the Citizen editorial bewails  today, “the increasingly anti-intellectual and anti-science orientation of the government.”

The data derived from the long form census is the basis of most government policy at municipal, provincial and federal levels, as well as private and public sector investment decisions.

The arguments of the know-nothings tend to be that a) privacy is invaded and b) that, by inference, by depriving governments of data they will somehow make better (more conservative) decisions.

The privacy invasion argument is rubbish, for two reasons. First, because Stats Can shares no personal information whatever with other departments, and has never been faulted for improper revelation of personal matters. As the former head statistician  Ivan Fellegi said on the radio, StatsCan is “obsessed” with the security of its data. The agency  is bound by law not to reveal it. Second, because compared to the data that all financial institutions are required to submit to the Department of Finance in relation to any “suspicious” transactions, the data collected in the long-form, such knowing how long it takes you to commute or how many bathrooms the average person has, is utterly without adverse effect on the citizen. The Privacy Commissioner reported three complaints in relation to the long-form census in the past decade. So if all the know-nothings were really concerned about privacy, they have exercised highly selective indignation.

No one has been bold enough actually to state that governments would somehow make better (that is, more conservative) decisions if it were deprived of accurate data. Yet that is the inference one must draw from the arguments the true believers are making. I am unable to elaborate this argument more fully; it cannot be done.  Not knowing what effects your policies are having  will not make those policies go away or cause them to be cheaper to deliver. Not knowing where and to whom services are to be denied or delivered will not increase efficiency.

Take a case dear to conservative hearts: reducing inappropriate immigration. Immigrants are continually doing less well with the passage of time. Their rates of assimilation  and finding jobs have worsened  overall as we change the composition of the immigrant populations away from Europeans. It is evident that, as we increase  immigration from non-European countries, the cultural transitions are harder for many immigrants to make. Mix in Islam and you can foresee massive social problems building up for the future. Does it profit us not to know exactly how badly or well new waves of Third World immigration are doing? I thought so.

The sad truth of the matter is that the know-nothings are as wrong about this issue as the global warming fanatics are about their pet obsession. They share the same tendency to believe something a priori (we are doing something terrible to the planet; all government is excessive) and to marshall the facts to suit the false premise.

They are missing the point that science – real knowledge- is the basis of material and intellectual progress. Knowledge, grounded in accuracy, assisted by diligence, and aided by perseverance, will finally overcome all obstacles, raise ignorance from despair, and produce happiness in the paths of science.

In turning away from science-based policy, the Conservative government is betraying reason, and demonstrating to a skeptical middle ground of Canadians that they should not be trusted with a majority. So to answer my colleague Duggan’s Dew, the statistics issue is vital to the march towards a Conservative majority. And they – we – are providing a stumbling block to that outcome.

Stephen Harper: this is your issue. Do something intelligent.