The libertarian devotion to individual freedom that led the Harper Government to kill Statistic Canada's mandatory long form census questionnaire apparently did not extend to the Chief Statistician of Canada's letter of resignation. Munir A. Sheikh posted a note about his resignation on the agency's website late Wednesday night. The Harper Libertarians redacted it Thursday morning, replacing it with an uninformative generic message. Here, for the record, thanks to Kady O'Malley, is the full text of the Chief Statistician's censored message to Canadians: July 21, 2010 OTTAWA -- There has been considerable discussion in the media regarding the 2011 Census of Population. There...

23 July, 2010

In an interview with CBC Radio's Jim Brown, Ivan Fellegi, who served as Canada's Chief Statistician from 1985 to 2008, set forth five ill-effects of the Harper Government's surprise decision to make a crucial part of the 2011 census voluntary. The results will be biased because aboriginals, new immigrants, the poor, those with low educational attainment, and the very well off are less likely to respond. This will deprive Canada of important information about social trends such as income polarization. It will eliminate our best source of information about aboriginal Canadians, immigrants, and minority language groups. Municipalities and provinces will lose...

15 July, 2010