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"And regarding trust, again, where is the evidence that one should or should not trust them."

Are you serious?

"What "data" do they have access to if anyone actually knows the answer?"

Under US law, US companies must comply with USA PATRIOT act requests for information unconditionally. One aspect is, the company cannot reveal the request even exists. As Lockheed Martin makes most of it's income from the Defense establishment, then the Canadian Census Data they have given to the US government, we must assume is: 'all of it'. Every last byte.

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"I think it's important to always carry enough technology to restart civilization, should it be necessary." Mark Tilden

   

"Most of the remaining persons who do not wish to fill it out are the ones who just don't take it seriously enough and only respond to the threat of a fine."<br />
<br />
Well you could be right, but perhaps a good fraction of these people are protesting without saying so. I wonder what the quality of the data is like? Unfortuanetly, we won't know for quite some time, if ever.<br />
<br />
"Statscan also has not taken people to court because they try to get as many as possible without coercion."<br />
<br />
I'm not so naive to think that StatsCan is not resorting to outright coercion out of kindness. StatsCan knows that angry people do not cooperate in the way they'd like. The StatsCan people do not hold all the cards in this equation, therefore they require a certain level of real cooperation, otherwise the quality of the data will suffer - it's far too easy to lie and far too expensive and time consuming to verify each returned form. The fewer people there are that remain, the easier it becomes to coerce and it also becomes easier to verify. As I said, I could have sent in a bogus form right on May 16 which would have never been noticed. At this late stage, a bogus return becomes much more risky, and that's why StatsCan is able to turn up the heat.<br />
<br />
"You will be threatened with fines and jail for not paying your taxes or filing returns, with consequences much more common and severe than for the census."<br />
<br />
The tax people in contrast will be happy to piss on you and they behave like insane jailers because they hold all the cards and know it. <br />
<br />
"but what kind of random sampling would provide sufficient data for planning at the submunicipal level?"<br />
<br />
For a street, count the houses and you're done. What do street level planners do? Install sewers and the like. They may count traffic usage which a census is useless for. Power consumption? Don't need a census for that. What exactly would they need the census data for? The planning at such a small scale seems far too tiny for something as massive and expensive as a nationwide census.<br />
<br />
No matter, is the value of having street level data worth the loss of individual liberty? I for one don't think so.<br />
<br />
You can argue that the people are too stupid to know what's good for them, therefore they must be forced to submit or else we'll all suffer for it. However, perhaps the problem of general apathy rests elsewhere, such as with a bogus electoral system, corrupt politicians, and insane tax collectors? Personally, I am fed up with it all and perhaps I'm not alone in massive numbers.<br />
<br />
"What evidence is there of this point? I know the protesters take themselves seriously, but why exactly does statscan fear them so much?"<br />
<br />
StatsCan appears to have taken the protesters seriously, at least up to a point. See link below:<br />
<br />
"Our Actions So Far, and Stat Can's Response"<br />
<a href="http://census.vivelecanada.ca/">http://census.vivelecanada.ca/</a><br />
<br />
In any event, and despite my rebuttal, I think you've raised some very good points that are worth considering. You may be right that far fewer people are protesting than some of us would like to see, unfortuately, it'll be hard to show one way or the other - at least not until someone decides to do street block level planning using the data!<br />
<br />

   

"where is the evidence that one should or should not trust them"<br />
<br />
I was not talking about evidence, I was talking about trust, as in the kind you have with a personal friend. If people do not trust StatsCan with their personal data - no matter what evidence may or may not exists to sustain such a feeling - then individuals ought to have the right NOT to give out their personal information. End of story. Canada is supposed to be free society after all, and we should not be coerced into accepting and living in fear or mistrust of our own government. Sadly, many of us seem to distrust government (according to polls), and the sentiment is growing.<br />
<br />
Remarks by<br />
<br />
THE HONOURABLE RALPH GOODALE, PC, MP<br />
<a href="http://www.pwgsc.gc.ca/comm/min/text/speeches/2003-11-27-00-e.html">http://www.pwgsc.gc.ca/comm/min/text/speeches/2003-11-27-00-e.html</a><br />
<br />
"It sounds "hokey", I know, maybe even naïve, but the public wants to be able to count on their governments for ethical conduct and basic integrity. And sadly, they doubt that they can. That is the issue.<br />
<br />
It should be profoundly disturbing to politicians when public opinion polls rank them at the bottom of the heap in terms of credibility and trustworthiness – barely ahead of corporate lobbyists. It is crippling to democracy when voter turnout drops toward the 50 percent range, at least in part because voters think candidates for public office are just too prone to self-serving self-interest. It is deeply troubling for our future when young people are simply turned off by the political process, because they don't find it respectable."<br />

   

Why do you want to know jk87?
The hiring of LM is another case of patronage, shifting tax dollars to corporations, screwing Canadians out of high level employment opportunities and replacing them with low level jobs such as census taker positions.

LM designed the software as well as supplying the hardware. LM is a habitual offender, or would be if corporations were subject to the same laws as people are. Yet stats can executives, who admit to being too incompetent to design their own hardware/software solution or even to hire Canadian University/College/Technical Institute graduates to design them for them, have no qualms about hiring corporate criminals who have, in addition to other crimes, been caught dispensing information that they promised to keep secret to the US government in this century.

Yet the gatekeepers want to know what proof we have that our information will be used improperly. Well, my response to this is that I have no proof that Stats Canada is in any way competent to safeguard the information that is entrusted to them. I will not give my information to criminal organizations or to entities that have had their infrastructure designed by criminal organizations of my own free will.

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"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
(Albert Einstein)

   

I'm inclined to agree with rearguard on his last post. I'm not a statistician (in fact, I hated the course in university), nor have I been involved with any real level of municipal planning. For all intents and purposes, let's just say I'm an average law-abiding guy with an average job who lives in an average house and pays his taxes.

The last census was taken in 2001. Assuming that there was no real objection/apathy/whatever to it as there is today, I'm going to assume that the data was successfully collected for all its statistical purposes and used by all the interested parties for whatever they use it for (nefarious or benign). The question that I, an average guy asks is, "what did it do for me? My community? My country?"

Now, as an average guy I wouldn't even know where to look for that information. But I can judge with my own two eyes what's been happening with my hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the country as a whole:

- Roads have fallen into disrepair
- The water provided by the city has been tasting worse and worse each year
- Winnipeg has been Canada's "Murder Capital" for several years
- Twice a week our mailbox is overflowing with flyers and advertisements
- Garbage collection has become infrequent and unpredictable. Bins are often overflowing in our +30C weather for weeks
- The North End of the city has been left to rot and decay while the city focuses on building massive expansions to the south-west
- Crime, especially auto theft is up all over the city
- A sizable stretch of downtown Main St. reeks of human waste (and is filled with addicts and vagrants) and no one seems to be interested in doing anything about it
- "Hallway healthcare" hasn't decreased despite the promises of the last two provincial governments
- Millions were spent on building an elaborate and functionally useless sculpture and restaurant on a bridge. At least $1 million went into providing plumbing to the bathroom that could survive our winters
- Federally we've been lied to by our political parties, and pushed into military situations that I'm not sure most Canadians agree with

I once read on the stats can site that the statistics are used for all government levels in civil planning, as market research for the public and private sector, etc. If the results of the 2001 Census is what has gotten us to where we are today then I must say that the statistics are doing a profoundly crappy job. At best they do absolutely nothing to improve our quality of life, and at worst they're being twisted by those with their own selfish interests that end up harming our quality of life.

The half-billion dollars it cost to run this turkey is money that could've been better spent half a billion better ways. Compliance with it will be equated with acceptance, and until enough of us stand up and say "no", the government will continue to waste our time and money on an exercise that is at best useless and at worst very, very sinister.

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Clayton Rumley
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http://www.claytopia.net

   

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