Angry in the Great White North

The controversy over changes to the census shouldn't be controversial:

Now, personally, I adore discussions of statistical methodology. Can't get enough. And so, I must admit, I was a little tickled when Industry Minister Tony Clement ordered Statistics Canada to change the census without the slightest public consultation.

Henceforth, while Canadians will still be required by law to complete the short census form, the long form, previously sent to one-fifth of households, will be voluntary. The response rate will decline, of course, and so the minister also directed that the long form be sent to one-third of households to compensate.

This has gotten people upset:

Then the campaigns and petitions began. A long, long list of organizations wrote to formally protest the government's "misguided decision" -- that's the phrase polite people use instead of "jackassery" -- and demand its repeal. And these weren't the usual pothead Marxists. It was the Statistical Society of Canada. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities. The Canadian Marketing Association. The Canadian Association for Business Economics. I doubt the membership of the Canadian Association for Business Economics spends a lot of time reading Das Kapital and taking bong hits.

Here's my take.  A government need never, ever, require permission to not ask citizens invasive and personal questions.

Many people have moaned that the Conservatives have not been all that conservative.  Hey, sometimes the only thing that connects purity and practicality is the fact that they both start with "p".

Having said that, this is a purist move.

Why does the Federation of Canadian Municipalities need national census data?  It shouldn't.  If a municipality needs demographic data for the municipality, then it should run its own survey.

The Canadian Marketing Association?!  Are you serious?  The Canadian government works for me, and protects my interests and the interests of my fellow citizens.  How are my interests served when marketers are given taxpayer-funded information so that they can spin their marketing claptrap with greater precision?  If marketers want demographic information, then they should run their own surveys.

Will this lack of data hamper the ability of government to run a nanny state?  Well, duh!  Good!  The government ought to be smaller.  And this is where the purity factors in.  A truly conservative Conservative government ought to be aggressively pursuing a course of not poking around the business of Canadians.

So marketers are upset.  So what.  The government has no business giving them my information, even if I am not named personally.  Indeed, the government has no business enabling marketers with information collected from other Canadians that can be used in a statistical sense to represent me.

It's a form of corporate welfare.  Worse than that, it isn't giving a favoured business money or land or a tax break.  It's giving a favoured business me.

It is immoral for the government to provide information about me, either directly identifying me, or through aggregate statistics, to any private interest (unless, of course, that private interest has been contracted out to perform some legal task on behalf of the government).   The government has to provide some services, and perform certain duties on my behalf, so within that limited context it must know some details about who I am.  I expect that only the absolute minimum of information will be collected, and that it will be kept secure. 

If I so choose, I can personally enter into a contract with a private concern to provide more revealing information (filling out an online survey, for example) if that private concern manages to convince me that the information will result in products that will make my life better.  If I'm skeptical that I will profit from giving up a measure of my privacy, then it is my right to decline to enter in such a contract.  The government undermines that right by collecting information under threat of punishment, then handing it over to that private interests.

But besides the question of who gets the information, what is fundamental here is the fact that it is my right not to provide information to the government except under well defined circumstances, and then with the promise that the information will be used only for the purpose for which it was intended.  That means the government only needs my permission to gather information (and better damn define precisely who gets that information and why).  The government never needs my permission to not gather information, nor to stop gathering information. 

This controversy is absurd.  We should value our privacy more. 

I'm not alone: The Fraser Institute agrees with me for the same reasons.