Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Stockwell Unleashes A Corker: Mandatory Census Long-Form Will Force Your Neighbor To Reveal If They're Jewish

Srockwell Day wins the steak-knives with this defense of the government's changes to the census long-form:

If you are among the groups of people who are demanding this free info I have a question for you based on past 'quizzes'. Do you think it is right that you can threaten your neighbour with jail time if she doesn't tell you if she has mental issues or not? Or who does what chores in the house?

Or whether she is a Jew or not? Don't you find that one even a little bit chilling?

Words fail me at the sheer stupidity of this statement. I could refute it, by for instance noting that a user of census data can't find out anything about their neighbor. Its all aggregated. In fact, if the sub-tract level data for a particular area does let you make guesses as to the individuals in the sub-tract, Stats Canada won't let you see it. I could also note that this information is not free. But why bother? That would be like playing classical music in a disco.

5 comments:

Scanner said...

Almost makes me hopeless. Who votes for these antediluvians?
The only problem I have with the long form has nothing to do with whether it's private - it's that Lockheed Martin is involved. Bring it all inhouse.

Skinny Dipper said...

Thank you, Stockie, for warning us about the dangerous poison oy vey that may creeping up near the homes of our fellow Canadians. However, I would feel much better if I didn't know about this info.

Terence said...

I sometimes call the Tories neanderthals. I think the neanderthals were more advanced than that.

crf said...

Doesn't he belong to the party that was sending out Jewish holiday cards to strangers?

How'd they do that? Some sort of list of Jewish voters the Conservatives compiled themselves, and then sent out to all the party's marketing officers.

I guess Stock can't stand the fact that the hated Stats Canada has always behaved ethically with private information, while his own lovely Conservative party is the one obsessed with secretly ethnically profiling Canadians for its own dubious partisan purposes.

Meta Kaizen said...

I'm surprised Stockwell didn't point to the modern day inconvenience of having to return to one's own town to partake of the census Like Mary and Joseph.

3 Wise Men- perhaps Harper, Day, and Clement- administered the long form that day:

Marital Status? Awkward shuffling between M & J.

Are you the biological parents? Long story

Religion of the Baby? Other.

What, like Samaritan? No, other.

Statistics Bethlehem collected the data and the region overbuilt Inns as a result for a generation.