Cartoon by Ingrid Rice.

Gadfrey Daniel! I’m on the same side as Stephen Harper, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and Gadfrey Daniel! once more, the Fraser Institute! I say NO to the census “long form.”

I must say, without intending to hedge, that my opposition takes the form of simple questions.

Why do you want this information?

What specific purpose is it used for?

Is this to get information at taxpayers’ expense for corporations who could get the same information on their own dime?

Is it, more likely, information they badly want but have no way of getting with any certainty it’s accurate unless it’s extracted from citizens under duress?

Let’s get down to cases with a few questions to the census man/woman.

If you aren’t going to disclose anybody’s name, why then do you need it?

Why do you need my telephone number unless someone is going to call me — like a telemarketing company?

Why do you need to know who stays in my place, including children, by name? Is this so telemarketers know that mine is a very good place to sell kids clothing or family lifestyle magazines? Or if there are no children, peddlers of dentures, prosthetic devices and electric carts?

Why do you want to know whether people who live with me are foreigners? Might I expect a visit from the immigration people?

Too personal, step away

You ask highly personal questions about people staying with me, including their relationship to me and if they’re living common-law, plus much, much more. Why do you need this? What use will be made of the information? Just on the common law question — of what earthly business is it of yours what relationships people have with one another?

Remembering that the names and details of my guests will now be known to you, why do you need to know about their mental health problems?

What business is it of yours where my guests were born, including whether or not they are landed immigrants and if so, when they achieved that status?

Am I doing investigations for the immigration department?

What possible right have you to know my guest’s religion? What use will you make of that information? To be peddled to religious nuisances who pound on the door and interrupt one’s Sunday hangover?

Why, unless you want to send them a birthday card in their native tongue, does the Canadian government demand that I demand information from my guests on the basis that I might go to prison if they don’t give it to me?

Since French and English are the official languages of Canada, of what interest is it to Ottawa what other languages are spoken unless, of course, this information is sold to telemarketers?

Ancestors? Who cares?

Why should I tell you how much income I made and how much tax I paid?

Are you seriously asking me to believe that this information will not be sent to the tax department? Am I to trust you? Be prepared for a surprise — I don’t!

You really get personal about my ancestry and religion. Of what concern is it of yours what my ancestry is? Dealing with religion, what’s it to you? You want to know all about my parents. What possible reason can you have for that? They’re not likely to either need help from the government or cheat it since they’re both dead.

It’s interesting to note that the information about “race” goes to the people who administer the Employment Equity Act. Does that include names and addresses? Who gets this information — the lowliest clerk in the department?

You want to know where people living with me lived five years ago, a question I might find too personal for even me to ask of them. Is this information for municipal governments to help them to identify “illegal” suites?

Reason being?

Before I answer a lot of personal questions, under penalty of prison if I don’t, just tell me, question by question, why you want this information. I base this request on the notion that my privacy cannot be invaded unless good reason is shown. This “good reason” is not satisfied by saying that we have “good reasons.”

Your whole case seems to be “we need the information” and “trust us.”

That’s not good enough, and I don’t.

Those who have set their hair afire over the abandoning of the “long form” say that in surveys, people don’t object.

Okay, not for the first time, I stand alone as an objector and do so on principle — the principle being that almost everything government wants to know about me is none of their damned business.

It’s often said, “If you have nothing to hide, why worry?”

I worry because I do have something to hide — my privacy!

I have that old fashioned notion that if someone demands information from me, they must at the very least tell me why they need that information and what use they will make of it.

Is that too much to ask of our government?

Governments are generally so untrustworthy we must have ombudsmen, privacy commissioners, auditors-general and conflict of interest commissioners to protect the interests of the lowly citizen. We have these and other people in place for one simple reason — governments habitually break trust with the citizenry. Why would they be any different in this regard?

Numbers for everyone

I remember when the Canada Pension Plan was introduced, we were told that whatever information we gave the government would just be our little secret. In no time, the SIN number was required for ID by almost anyone you wanted to do business with.

If the long form census — indeed the short form for that matter — requires personally identifiable information, Canadians are entitled to know, in detail, what that information will be used for.

If I’m asked, “Do you not trust your government?” my answer is a plain, unequivocal NO. Why the hell should I?

Second, this from my colleague Damien Gillis just back from looking at carnage of the Chilean Farmed Fish collapse:

And so it was to my horror that I read Mary Ellen Walling’s callous take on the Chilean Crisis I had just witnessed. Walling [said]: “Prices are up 10 to 15 per cent over the past six months because of the lack of product in the marketplace…It’s good for the B.C. industry because we’ve got good, solid prices moving forward…There’s a significant lack of Chilean product in the U.S. market. It’s a great opportunity [for B.C. salmon farmers]” Rather like a spokesman for undertakers praising Hurricane Katrina as being good for business! Nice guys these fish farmers!

One cuddly cat, our Prime Minister.

I took a whirlwind trip to Toronto a week ago and, as always, airplane rides are for contemplation and I began to wonder a wonder – why do we like some politicians and detest others? And how come we tolerate a system where the leader’s wishes trump parliamentary power?

Those who belong to one team or another tend to extend the hand of forgiveness to their leaders’ peccadilloes especially when they’re in government. When a government goes badly wrong though, as Glen Clark’s did, love can shift to hate overnight. The NDP are especially cruel to their fallen angels as Mr. Clark, Ujjal Dosanj, can no doubt attest.

Why, for example do I dislike the Prime Minister; have a gut feeling of negativity towards Mr. Ignatieff; think Jack what’s-his-name from the NDP is OK and rather like Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc.

And why should liking or disliking a leader matter?

Re Harper, maybe it’s because he was always late for my talk show though he knew that a guestless host closely resembles a fish flopping around in the bottom of the boat.

I don’t care for Mr. Ignatieff because he’s shown a massive disinterest in British Columbia and for me that’s fatal.

Mr. what’s-his-name is a decent sort of bloke and his only real failing is that he acts as if he were important?

I like Mr. Duceppe because he’s given me a standing invitation to go with him to a Hab’s game next time I’m in Montreal. He does an excellent job of keeping the country together by reason of being an official separatist. As long as he and the Bloc exist, Quebeckers can vote BQ to protest, secure in the knowledge that the bribes will continue thus they can safely go about their business of being Canadians without loving Canada.

Our  “fuehrer prinzip” reflects a system where all power reposes in the Prime Minister who acts not on the advice of MPs but unelected power brokers. We’ve come to look upon our elections as being 3 leaders plus Duceppe and vote accordingly. I know that will bring the cry “I vote for the person, not the party” to which I must reply “obviously you have no idea how the system works and you should confine your political action to electing directors of your golf club where the candidate’s ability may have some bearing on how the place is run.

The National Media understand this leader worship and tells us not what the party stands for but what the leader will do. If you vote for “the man” not the party your choice is about as important as your preference in ice cream flavours. Canada’s best journalists, an oxymoron if there ever was one, make the leaders’ debates look like a session of a Youth Parliament where only proper questions are asked and decorum outscores debate every time. Think about it, when was the last time an issue from BC, was put to the leaders during the debates? When was the question of the Pacific fisheries ever asked? Or Forestry? The plain fact is that British Columbia is as important to our political leaders as the Scilly Isles are to London.

Very little difference can be found where a leader’s response to issues invariably boils down to “me too but I’d do it this way not that way”. There isn’t a large “C” Conservative Party in the land except that hideous lot running things in Victoria. There certainly isn’t a socialist party and the Liberal philosophy has always been nice and simple – do what it takes to get elected then stay elected.

On issue of national unity nothing has changed in my lifetime. Quebec has fits of separatism like recurring bouts of poison ivy, but gets goodies like the child threatening to run away gets his Popsicle. Every election we’re told how important “The West” is indication the Central Canadians refusal to understand of the reality that there are three very distinct regions in Western Canada which only unite when Ottawa power brokers pisses them all off at once.

The winning formula never changes – get your votes in Ontario and Quebec and you’re high and dry. It would be different if we had some sort of Proportional Representation where MPs have some power but that won’t happen unless and until electoral reform becomes an issue of the people, not just university professors.

There’s a curious dichotomy playing out in this country at present – we’re all told and indeed tell ourselves that we don’t want or need yet another election yet we’re also told and believe that minority governments are terrible so we must avoid all forms of PR! Which is it to be, a five year dictatorship by a leader who has parliament in his pocket or a prime minister whose control of the purse and policy, depends upon Parliamentary consent?

There are of course other options such as the American “checks and balance” system where the executive, elective and juridical branches check each other’s power. It’s the best system I know – on paper. The perfect becomes imperfect because the elective branch can’t stanch the flow of money from interest groups to those they want to interest – and influence. But that’s not the product of the system but the lack of will to use that system appropriately. The US system – endorsed by no less an authority than constitutional expert Dr Edward (Ted) McWhinney, – has no buzz in Canada where those who profit from the system have no incentive to change it. We prefer the Canadian way – bitch over our beer only rousing ourselves to get another.

There being no will to reform, there’s no way to have it.