More Pro-Census Communism

Ottawa’s plans to change Canada’s mandatory census long-form could impact future construction decisions, says the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario (RCCAO).

“As our society becomes more complex it is important that detailed questionnaires be maintained so that a range of comparative and trend analyses can be done,” said Andy Manahan, executive director of RCCAO.

And Alex Carrick, chief economist for CanaData, puts his finger on the real Census scandal:

...Canadians still deserve freer and easier access to StatsCan and CANSIM information, especially as the world moves more to an information based economy. He did say that a lot of construction activity can take place based on the finer details collected through the census.

...which is that you have to pay through the nose for the information. You start looking around for data products on the StatsCan website and you keep tripping over price lists. Blame Mulroney for that. In any case, corresponding material the U.S. is much less expensive, and hence American web entrepreneurs have been able to do all sorts of interesting things with their census data that are us too damn expensive to attempt up here.