GI Jane Taber is back on the war path to set the agenda for the Globe and Mail, and as per usual it is splitting down partisan lines. Her argument is that based on an unreliable newsletter poll she concludes that retirees, a key voting demographic, is preparing to break away from the Tories over the decision to make the long form census voluntary. I don't think failure to fill it out should be punishable by jail time, but I support making the random sample fill out the long form census. When you make it voluntary, the people more likely to fill it out are the people with more spare time. If you work 50 hours a week and are hardly ever at home, you are far less likely to fill out the form. If "more spare time" people disproportionately fill out voluntary forms over very busy people, then the results will skew to one demographic over another. Ergo, retirees with more spare time will be better represented in the census which may benefit their demographic in the form of government policy.
I believe that the government will negotiate a compromise. Make it mandatory, but with a fine not jail time. The people who are the most likely to be annoyed doing the long census paper work are the same busy people who will be under represented in the government policy that results from the voluntary survey. And also, the names attached to the data collected should be protected by the government. Not all of the information should be released to the public, and certainly not that containing valuable private information.
taber is a moron and as a retired guy i am sick of bogus polls telling people what the will of the people is. if all you poll are commies then you will get the commie point of view.
ReplyDeleteHave any of you ever wondered why you suddenly get a lot of requests to buy something, or join a record club or book club or whatever. Well, just fill out some application with your name misspelled on purpose. Amazing how soon those request come to you with your misspelled name. So, who is selling this info to those groups. Supposed to be private. Same goes for the census info.
ReplyDeleteAs a retiree, if Harper backtracks in any way on this it will prove to me once and for all that he is the political coward I already think he is.
ReplyDeleteWhy punish the poor with fines for not filling out a form, a wealthy person can afford the monetary penalty.
ReplyDeleteIf the information is so important why not pay for it and ask those groups with a lower compliance an opportunity to make fifty bucks?
Who checks the census forms? The census taker; and the census taker doesn't care what is filled in the blanks, so these poor folk who have trouble filling it out can just write in random numbers or names. It is not up to the census taker to make sure it is accurate.
ReplyDeleteSo the info is compromised anyway...
Voluntary is much better!
Read my lips Jane Taber; "The Canadians" really don't care and they don't read your articles.
ReplyDeleteDid you read the lead up to that CARP poll?
ReplyDeleteThey tell seniors their opinion (CARP is on the list of orgs against the change) and then ask if they agree.
About seven or eight years ago when I worked at a hotel, Harper came by one night for a constituency meeting of about three hundred people.
ReplyDeleteI despaired that night because I was the only one in the room under the age of forty and couldn't figure out how Harper could beat Chretien with this room full of white haired people.
Turns out I was wrong.
For Taber to suggest that these people would abandon ship because of this census noise is beyond the pale.
What a shit disturber.