During Wednesday CBC’s town hall,Terrence Watson asked: …if the census is only used to _justify_ government programs, but never to shrink or eliminate them, then can anyone see why somebody interested in smaller government — like me — would be suspicious of it? It is a bit of an irrelevant point, because changing the format […]

Yesterday it was the CBC, today it’s the Globe and Mail: Taking questions will be Stephen Gordon, professor of economics at Université Laval in Quebec City and a fellow of the Centre interuniversitaire sur le risque, les politiques économiques et l’emploi (CIRPÉE). He is also a co-author of Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, a Canadian economics blog […]

Our Prof. Gordon is too modest to announce this event, so I’ll do it for him. CBC Virtual Town Hall: Ending the mandatory long census form. Join the CBC’s national affairs editor Chris Hall and CBC Politics blogger Kady O’Malley at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, as they host a live virtual town hall forum on […]

A few months ago I received from Michelle Bennett at Ivey’s Executive Development Program an absolutely terrific piece of research – MIT Lead Response Management Study. The study examines one basic question: When should companies call web-generated leads for optimal contact and qualification ratios? If I could send one study out to every business in […]

From Today’s Toronto Sun editorial: Statistics Canada, which compiles census data, supposedly guards private information like a pit bull guarding a meth lab. If that is the case, then why is the decision to nuke the mandatory long-form census being condemned by everyone from Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals, to municipal politicians, to the Canadian Medical Association, […]

The new talking point on the census: Tony Clement: Data is valuable to many. But personal questions you would like to force Cdns to answer on pain of jail is just plain wrong. Maxime Bernier: Why in the world should peaceful and honest citizens be threatened with jail if they refuse to answer these questions?! […]

Stephen Gordon’s blog entry A question for Maxime Bernier got me to thinking: “What were Bernier and other MPs saying about the census in 2006?” I decided to go through Hansard for the 39th Parliament, 1st Session (2006-04-03 to 2007-10-15) and look it up.

Peter MacKay on a proposed fighter jet purchase We have very capable pilots currently serving in the Canadian Forces. We want to continue that trend. By the year 2016, 2020, they will be asked to fly 35-, 40-year-old aircraft. So it helps a great deal, I can assure you, in recruiting, to have new gear, […]

A follow-up to the pieces How Difficult Will It Be For the Federal Liberals to Win an Election? and How Difficult Will It Be For the Federal Conservatives to Win an Election?. An obvious question to ask is: Who cares what happened in, say, 1911? What relevance does that have today? The answer is simple:

I believe there is some middle ground we can come to here.  All it involves is a re-write of Section 31 of the STATISTICS ACT: 31. Every person who, without lawful excuse, (a) refuses or neglects to answer, or wilfully answers falsely, any question requisite for obtaining any information sought in respect of the objects […]