at least he's not wearing a bolo tie

So I am still unbelievably annoyed by Stephen Harper and his ridiculous decision to kybosh the mandatory long form version of the census. Harper and his cronies keep saying that they need "to protect Canadians from the coercive and intrusive methods that had been used" to collect census data and that the data can be collected either from other sources or in another manner. The fact of the matter is that no one has ever been jailed, the total number of complaints from the 2006 census numbers 168 (including the 2 made directly to the privacy commissioner - and remember that this form went to 12 million people), the new methodology is not statistically sound, and cannot be collected from any other sources. Every public policy organization, research group and think tank (save the Fraser Institute, insert eye roll here) has come out against the change, yet the conservatives refuse to relent. For no good reason except that Harper is too smug to admit when he was wrong. Were I pregnant (which I'm not ... trust me, not even close) and about to have boy, I would definitely name him Munir after Canada's Chief Statistician who stepped down rather than have uneducated political interference affect the quality of his work.

So this rant leads us to the reason for this post ... it would not be wrong to label me a liberal. In fact I might swing even further left. But just because I have liberal leaning tendencies, doesn't mean that I automatically vote Liberal. One time I even voted Conservative (although it was back when they had the Progressive as part of their name ... the dropping of that descriptor back in 2003 should have warned us all of their march to the right ...). I was not a huge Paul Martin fan, thought Dion was ahead of his time (I think that his Green Shift is a policy that will eventually be law ... too bad he was a horrible communicator and the dog named Kyoto was just too much), and I'm unsure how I feel about Ignatieff. They say he is too aloof, too intellectual, and doesn't drink enough Tim Horton's. I don't buy it. Harper has an MA ... sadly it hasn't hurt him. I guess Iggy's handlers thought he should come down from his ivory tower and mingle with the people. Sadly they decided this is how he should do it:




Could be worse ... he could have been dressed like this (sorry, it never gets old).