This is not an attempt to cover all the nuances of the current imbroglio over the 2011 Canada Census and the Harper government's decision to make completing the long form optional. I studiously avoided any statistics courses in university, being well aware of my academic weaknesses, but I know any statistical sampling that is based on self-selection debases the sampling and renders any conclusions drawn from it vulnerable.
The government's, and especially Industry Minister Tony Clement's, mishandling of the census file leading up to yesterday's resignation of the Statistics Canada's chief, Munir Sheikh, is more in my area of expertise.
The long form census problem was an invention of the polticos in the Prime Minister's Office looking for a way to energize the extreme right-wing demographic in the same way as does throwing a bone to a hungry dog.
What’s the point of all this, politically? There hasn’t been a hue and cry in years past about the fact that a fifth of Canadians have been required to fill out the long-form census. Past governments of both political stripes, like governments throughout the Western world, do something like this, and it’s one of the reasons why Statistics Canada is regarded internationally as one of the very best statistical agencies in the world.
The Conservative caucus wasn’t on the warpath about this; the country’s right-wing media were silent. Past census questions over language, ethnicity or gender had sparked occasional controversies, but not the mandatory form.
No, this sprang from Mr. Harper’s ideological core conviction about Big Government and, more important, a tactical political sense that here was an issue that could activate his party’s populist base – that could galvanize the core with bogus but potent arguments about the perils of the “nanny state,” the “elites,” the “bureaucrats,” the same sort of people who connive to take away your guns, raise your taxes and threaten your liberties, against whom only the Harper government stands resolute.
Once in a while, the base needs to be served, and here was an issue that could be manufactured to serve it.
link: PM’s census policy senseless but great for the party - The Globe and Mail
The affair began to go off the rails when Clement tried to argue that the 2011 census would not be compromised; that measures could be taken to assure the quality of the results even as large numbers of Canadians were missed or refused, out of political bias, to complete the questionnaires (the latter group increased by the volatile comments of the minister and spokespersons for the prime minister.
The minister’s claims have angered and demoralized a staff already under pressure from budget cutbacks, which have led, for example, to less thorough regional analysis of statistical trends. This assault on the integrity of the general census is, for many of the 6,000 workers within the agency, particularly galling. “The census is the flagship of the department,” said one person inside Statscan. “If you want to demoralize staff, there’s no bigger target.”
link: Clement accused of misrepresenting census impact - The Globe and Mail
Clement's feeble arguments came after earlier efforts by he and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to convince the PMO that the long form is necessary and should be continued. As usual the PMO clamped-down and made ministers take the flack for a prime minister who is above commenting on such things.
The government appears most concerned by reports of dissent within the cabinet ranks. Columnists in both The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star have reported that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Industry Minister Tony Clement, whose department contains Statistics Canada, opposed the census decision. The Globe’s Jeffrey Simpson reported that they wrote letters to that effect, but were overruled by the Prime Minister. “No such letter exists,” Mike Storeshaw, spokesman for Mr. Flaherty, e-mailed, adding that Mr. Flaherty fully supports the decision.
link: Placating Tory base on the census causes Harper government grief - The Globe and Mail
Well I have no doubt the no such letters exist, with the emphasis on the present tense. That's the way things happen in Stephen Harper's government.
His is a government in which most ministers are reduced to silence, except for those kept on short leashes, and in which everything, down to astonishingly small details, are decided by the Prime Minister, and only by him. His mind can be changed, but only occasionally and usually only after the passage of time between his initial decision and a new one. In this instance, despite internal discussion, his initial decision has stuck.
Mr. Clement, accordingly, has been reduced to a pathetic excuse for a minister, peddling arguments he knows are false, having failed to convince the Boss of why the long-form census made sense.
link: PM’s census policy senseless but great for the party - The Globe and Mail
The pathos of Clement's performance culminated this week when he erroneously claimed that in inclusion of a voluntary option in the advice provided to him meant it was viable (did he read the analysis of such an option?) and that it didn't really matter anyway since deputy ministers report to ministers and do as they are told. Is that really his misunderstanding how the public service works, or is that just Tony again making an ass of himself in service as Harper's bum boy?
Perhaps he thought he could get away with the lie because the general population probably thinks deputies report to ministers. Every public servant manager, however, knows that deputy ministers report to the Secretary of the Privy Council (of which the Prime Minister is President) and are appointed by the Governor General in Council. In fact, deputies (and their equivalents, as was Mr. Sheikh) are often put in charge of ministries and agencies to keep an eye on overly ambitious or administratively challenged ministers.
The Harper government’s refusal to listen to reason on the long-form census caused the chief statistician to quit Wednesday night – an extraordinary move – and left Statistics Canada in open revolt. Having gotten into this mess, the Conservatives must now retreat, or put the very future of the census itself at risk.
Chief Statistician Munir Sheikh’s letter of resignation, from a career public servant who has served in the Privy Council Office, in Finance and as deputy minister of Labour, is exceptional. Clearly, Mr. Sheikh was not prepared to let the government order up a flawed census, while offering Statscan’s own official silence as proof that everything is fine.
City and provincial governments had already warned that replacing the mandatory long-form version of the census with a voluntary survey would effectively gut the census. Every kind of industry, labour, academic and charitable organization had sent petitions, letters and press releases saying the same thing, backed by a truckloads of statisticians and economists.
Now, in his letter or resignation, the nation’s chief statistician offered the final verdict: On “the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census. “It cannot.”
Even so, Mr. Sheikh might have stayed on. The loyalty of the most senior public servants to their departments and their sense of duty to the crown is profound. It’s what got them there.
What might have pushed Mr. Sheikh over the edge was an interview in which Industry Minister Tony Clement reminded the people at Statscan that they worked in a government department charged with carrying out the orders of their minister.
link: Long or short, Tories must retreat on the census - The Globe and Mail
No, Tony, senior public servants know they work for and at the pleasure of the Crown to serve the public good. And once and a while they can be pushed too hard and a whole mess blows up in the politicians' faces.
Some of us are old enough to remember the James Coyne affair of the 1960s. Coyne was Governor of the Bank of Canada and had a public disagreement with then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker over the government's economic strategy. The prime minister tried to use the House of Commons to fire Coyne, was thwarted by the Senate but Coyne resigned anyway. Partly as a consequence, the Diefenbaker government never had the public's trust as an economic manager.
It wouldn't have surprised me, had Parliament been sitting, that Harper would have tried to use it to make the long form a confidence issue and threatened an election over the census. He still might, if he can't find a new head of for Statistics Canada who will follow his orders before Parliament returns in the autumn.
It's time to ask how much longer will the prime minister allow Clement to continue to embarrass the government. How much is that seat in Muskoka worth when it tarnishes the government in the rest of Canada.
Clement is the guy who handled the SARS crisis so well when he was Health Minister in Ontario, who twice ran unsuccessfully for leader of his party , who lost his own seat in the provincial parliament and moved to Muskoka where a dead moose could be relatively assured of winning election to Ottawa on the conservative ticket, and who scandalously scattered millions of pork barrel dollars across Muskoka in advance of the 36 hour G-20 photo-op last month.
And now this, the resignation, on Tony's watch, of a respected public servant because Tony and his political staff mismanaged the file.
Now the question is: Who will replace him, with the actual census mere months away? “You could probably find somebody,” said Don McLeish, head of the Statistical Society of Canada. “Whether that person would be highly respected within the scientific or statistical community is something else.”
Anyone of stature would insist that the integrity of the long form be maintained, which means the government would have to back down. Anyone prepared to carry out the government’s orders and conduct only a voluntary survey would have no credibility, either within or outside of the department. It’s July. Not a lot of people are paying a lot of attention to the shenanigans in Ottawa.
To secure a credible replacement, Stephen Harper must direct Mr. Clement to say something like: In view of concerns raised by provincial governments and other interested parties, Statistics Canada is directed to proceed with the 2011 census as it has been previously conducted. But to address the rightful objections of citizens who consider the long-form version of the census a violation of their right to privacy, this government will establish a task force ... and so on.
link: Long or short, Tories must retreat on the census - The Globe and Mail
So Tony has a couple of choices; resign himself and show a bit of spinal fortitude and competence as a minister, or suck it up for the Boss and remain Canada's most pathetic excuse for a cabinet minister. I think we all know which he will choose.
