It's not often that a senior bureaucrats resigns willing. It's even less often that they do so as a matter of principle. This is exactly what Munir Sheikh, head of Statistics Canada, has done today. Albeit he resigned in deference to a bad principle, but hey, good enough for government work:
There has also been commentary on the advice that Statistics Canada and I gave the government on this subject.
I cannot reveal and comment on this advice because this information is protected under the law. However, the government can make this information public if it so wishes.
I have always honoured my oath and responsibilities as a public servant as well as those specific to the Statistics Act.
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.
Well, thanks for showing up.
We are entering the summer doldrums and so any news, even the resignation of a statistician, can become big news. Since Industry Minister Tony Clement's decision to make the Census long form voluntary, some three weeks ago, this minor administrative change has evolved into a full scale affair. Google News gives 756 results for "canada census long form." A group of Census lovers has even created a You Tube video. The whole thing is somewhat bizarre. As Colby Cosh noted, scrapping the long form is "not literally among the first 200 policy changes that would be implemented by an intelligent libertarian given plenary power."
Sure enough, but if you can tweak leviathan, why not tweak leviathan? It's a small battle, but the small battles are often the most revealing. Want to get an idea of how mixed our mixed economy really is? Just look at the long list of organizations that oppose scrapping the mandatory long form. Business, charities, government agencies, municipalities and a long line of ethnic pressure groups. Their dependence on government data is suggestive of their dependence on government itself. They need government data to demand government largesse.
What's fascinating is how the Census Centurions are seeking to defend what is, for many of them, their literal meal ticker. To them the debate over the long-form is not about freedom, but just a matter of statistical accuracy. What the defenders of the mandatory form exhibit is the casual presumption that they have a right to intrude into people's personal lives, and then with nary a pause, to use that data to plan people's lives. Earlier today the Western Standard's Associate Editor, Terrence Watson, participated in a live blog on the Census. I was impressed with this response (at 2:58) from Nik Nanos, a highly regarded pollster:
Not to upset the applecart but perhaps we should discussing the merits of fact-based policy-making versus ideologically based policy-making. After all, if you are driven by ideology, research is not as much of a priority. There's obviously room to mix both but how much is the question.
An individual's personal privacy is regarded not as a right, but as merely an "ideological" position. Libertarians, conservatives and classical liberals are often branded as "ideological," as if our positions were something akin to Catholic dogma, a set of arbitrary rules decreed by supernatural instinct. There is no conflict between a "fact-based" policy and an ideological policy, unless your ideology isn't based on facts.
Those who accuse others of being ideological are, usually, throwing stones while living in very big glass houses. It is an ideological position to believe that the state has a right to monitor the private lives of its citizens, and to use that data as it sees fit for the "public interest." While such a position has many variants, they can all be subsumed into one word: statism. Statism is itself the product of moral collectivism.
Practical men, such as pollsters, usually dismiss such terms as "collectivism" and "individualism" as floating abstractions, the sort of thing graduate students discuss, not adults in the real world. I'm not a fan of John Maynard Keynes, but he often made, within fairly narrow contexts, many astute observations. His best was this one: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." To which I would correct by replacing economist with philosopher. The defenders of the mandatory long-form presume that the individual's rights extend no farther than the needs of the collective, be that the whole of Canada or merely whatever socio-economic or ethnic group they belong to. This is an ideology with a pedigree at least as old as Plato.
We are not so terribly sorry that the end of the long-form, however disingenuous were the Minister's motives in ending it, has made made the life of government statisticians that much harder. That's the breaks. Demanding that police officers obtain warrants before entering private dwellings, without permission, is a hardship for police officers. Expecting the Prime Minister of Canada to answer, or at least evade with some skill, embarrassing questions in the House of Commons is a hardship, for the Prime Minister. Believing that politicians should seek election for public office is a hardship, for the politician. The fact that something is hard for a public servant is neither here nor there. It is their job.
The government works for us, not the other way around. It's sole legitimate function is to defend our rights. If in protecting those rights it must encounter some bother, well, tough. 'Tis a pity that a voluntary Census will make things harder for Statistics Canada - though the Scandinavian countries ditched their Census years ago without a noticeable collapse in law and order. Simply put, our rights are more important that their convenience.
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