Circling the Idiot Wagons in Canada

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So, my libertarian vertebrae are slightly bothered by the threat to individual liberty for failing to fill out the long-form census. I'll admit it. Surely, the remedy for that is to create financial incentives or disincentives and removing the power to imprison. Hell, I bet there are twenty better things to do than simply sending the form out and hoping for the best in the face of unified cries of protest that this will produce bad data.

But in a dazzling burst of self-defeating logic and sheer idiocy, Stockwell Day, the President of the Treasury Board (and what is that?...see here) today tried to make sense of the census in the face of a barrage of pointed questions by reporters.  In doing so he argued that the extra data obtained from the long-form census was not necessary. Then, in what he took to be an unrelated issue, in order to justify the costs of building more prisons, he claimed that the statistics showing the crime rate in decline are not reliable. And that he has access to statistics that show that the rate of unreported crime has been increasing at "alarming" rates. Which means that the rates of people reporting that they are not reporting crime is increasing?

So, the current data on crime is false and misleading. Therefore, the thing to do is sabotage the long-form census to ensure that all of the data we rely on to make decisions is bad.  Oh, and don't worry, the government is keeping its own secret data that just happens to support its otherwise inexplicable decision making. Got it?

And these dudes lead in the polls. - Beta

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