Harper's census push months in the making - The Globe & Mail, Jul. 26 2010
Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided at the end of December to scrap the mandatory long-form census despite being told by Statistics Canada officials that important data would likely be lost or impaired as a result.
He considered going further by making the whole census voluntary, people familiar with what transpired have revealed. On the long census form, he overrode objections from his own officials in the Privy Council Office and senior finance department staff, although Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on the weekend that he thinks census data can be collected voluntarily without being compromised.
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Mr. Harper's decision has baffled political analysts familiar with his thinking - people including political scientist Tom Flanagan, who played a key role in Mr. Harper becoming prime minister - but not University of Calgary economist Frank Atkins, his graduate thesis supervisor.
While careful to stress he is not putting words in the Prime Minister's mouth, Prof. Atkins suggested Mr. Harper acted from a deep philosophical conviction - a libertarian view of the mandatory long-form census, which has been in use since 1971, as a Big Brother manifestation of the intrusive state.
Mr. Harper has indicated previously that he has philosophical problems with Statscan.
At a cabinet meeting at least 18 months ago, then-foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier - who has assumed a lead role in defending the government's long-form decision - proposed major cuts to Statscan based on ideological libertarianism. The Prime Minister was reported to be supportive (while then-clerk of the Privy Council Kevin Lynch was not).
Said Prof. Atkins: "I would agree with this census decision from a libertarian point of view. People like me look on this as the thin edge of the wedge, sort of 'Big Brother's around the corner,' if you're forcing people to reveal knowledge even though the knowledge isn't going to be attached to them."
That accords with
the Prime Minister's Office statement: "The government made this decision because we do not believe Canadians should be forced, under threat of fines, jail, or both, to disclose extensive private and personal information."
In fact, there are two faces to the controversy: the compulsory collection of information and the purposes for which the data may be used.
Academics and others have categorized what pollster Allan Gregg last week called "a classic culture war cleavage" as a clash between the role of knowledge, evidence and reason and the role of intuition, "common sense" and "decency." In this view, the elimination of the mandatory long form is seen by Mr. Harper's philosophical critics as an expression of the current small-c conservative ideological tendency to value belief and conviction over "data" and rationality.
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