With their numbers slipping in the polls and more information surfacing about who did and didn’t say what, it is difficult to understand why Stephen Harper’s Conservatives continue to cling to their decision to eliminate the census long form, even in the face of reasonable compromise.
The move to gut the five-year headcount, what statisticians say is the best tool to use to take the pulse of the country, is becoming so polarizing that recent polls have the Conservatives actually slipping in public support. An Ipsos-Reid poll shows the party with 34 per cent support, compared to the Liberals at 31 per cent, which is in the margin of error. An EKOS poll released Thursday puts the Conservatives at 29.7 per cent popularity, compared to 28.5 per cent for the Liberals. It is the Conservatives’ lowest percentage of support since they were elected to government in 2006.
Voters are passionate about many issues, but maybe Harper and Industry Minister Tony Clement didn’t think math would become one of them. Yet in the last two weeks, we’ve watched the head of Statistics Canada resign over the issue, claiming no voluntary form can as accurately replace the mandatory version and that Clement was misrepresenting how the agency felt about the move. This week, new documents have come forward that show Clement might have in fact done exactly that, claiming Statistics Canada supported the move when memos and emails between the agency and the government show it clearly did not.
At first the issue was privacy that the long form was too intrusive for the 20 per cent of the population selected to complete it, but that argument hasn’t passed muster. According to anecdotal evidence from other members of Parliament and the country’s privacy watchdog, few such concerns have ever been raised. Now both Clement and Harper have said the threat of jail time for not completing the census is inappropriate. The Liberals have since countered with a proposal to keep the mandatory form but eliminate prison as a penalty for not completing it. Now the Conservatives are saying they will include questions about languages used in the home on the short-form that every single family receives and must complete, also under threat of jail time. The National Statistics Council said Thursday that move is a waste of $30 million.
The reasoning behind this decision continues to elude opposition parties and pundits, and the counter-attack by the government in the face of merciless criticism comes across as crass. Even as every provincial government and social group that draws on information from the long form calls for the Conservatives to stop, Clement has responded by calling them all a bunch of free-loaders who, if they want the information the long form provides, can just go and find it themselves.
Maybe Harper never thought the battle would reach such intensity and feels forced to stick to his guns on principle alone. If it is just about privacy, the move seems like overkill. If it’s about jail time, that can be remedied. But if there is another deep-seated reason behind it that no one else can possibly think of, Harper would be better off sharing with the country instead of pursuing this bruising path so stubbornly.
