I'm a data geek and I'm enraged (and you should be too)

Allow me to interrupt these mindless musings to talk about something that is making me so unbelievably frustrated - the decision by the federal government to scrap the mandatory long form census. I cannot be nearly as articulate as some of my researching counterparts have been, see here and here and here but I really do have a bee in my bonnet if I can be so old fashioned about it.

The whole thing is about ideology trumping evidence. The government says they are doing away with the long form census because it is too invasive and they want to protect the privacy of Canadian citizens. They say that the government has no right to ask them how many bathrooms they have in their house. The thing is, the census doesn't ask them that. Also, in the past 2 census years (2001 and 2006) the privacy commissioner received exactly 3, yep 3, whole complaints from the general public. In fact after the last Census, when Stats Can did a public consultation about how to improve the census, not one person indicated that they should get rid of it. No one.

The census doesn't ask about bathrooms. It asks about ethnic origin. It asks about languages spoken. It asks about unpaid work in the home. It asks about transportation. These questions are vitally important for all levels of government when they provide services. The answers to the census questions allow government to decide where immigrant serving agencies, daycares, bus lines, roads, etc, should all be located. Now apparently Stephen Harper is just going to pull out his google map, put on his blindfold, spin around a few times, point his finger, and tell his trusty ministers where they should build things for whatever population lives there ... awesome.