Which society is more transparent, USA or Canada?

Background: about a year ago the New York Times published an on-line interactive map of US census data. You could look up stuff like median income, unemployment, life expectancy,.. Here's a link:

http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map 

         Well, prof Mark Jarvis of the Mowat Center (School of Public Policy and Government) at the University of Toronto saw the NY times map, showed it to his coworkers and everybody agreed it would be a good idea to do one for Canada. They even dreamed of improving the map's performance by introducing more search items such as local facilities for mental health care, the handicapped and the obese.

          The researchers at the Mowat center were quickly surprised to find that much of the data they were looking for was simply unavailable! There were large holes in the Canadian census data, especially in rural and northern Canada, geographical voids where information simply didn't exist (or was unaccessable). The prairies seemed most affected (ironic, as we'll soon see, because the data holes are due to policy decisions on the part of the Harper government which aims it's right wing rhetoric at - you guessed it! - rural populations). 

          The following Canadian Broadcasting Corp podcast contains an interview with prof Jarvis, between minutes 40 and 50. 

http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/the180_20150515_82862.mp3

          Professor Jarvis blames the Harper government's elimination of the "long form" census report in 2010. The flimsy rationale provided at the time was that people objected to a purported "invasion" of personal privacy by Big Brother. Here, once again, we see the Conservatives playing the populist, hairy-chested individualist card to their rural community base. Subsequent investigation demonstrated that the rationale was a lie: very few people actually did complain about the census' purportedly "invasive" nature - but it played well to the peanut gallery..

internal blog links: keywords: long from, census

http://transparencycanada.blogspot.ca/2010/10/lies-lies-lies-and-more-damned-lies.html 

         The real problem here of course is not just the petty, perennial problem of politicians pandering to the lowest common denominator to get the vote out: populism, scape-goating, smoke and mirrors (diverting attention from real issues), rabble-rousing, threats..

         The real problem is an ideological one. The Harperites have set out to remake the Canadian political scene in a foreign image, based on a radical American-style neoconservative, free market ideology. This vision, despite its down-home, folksy rhetoric and appeals to "traditional values", actually favors Big Business over democracy, environmental health, public safety and social justice. One suspects that Harper intends, not just to scoff up populist, anti-government votes in rural Alberta and Ontario, but to destroy the very basis upon which viable "progressive" social programs could be founded: he wants to destroy the information flows that such programs require both for their implementation and their on-going administration. What an ironic end for a government that was voted into power on a platform which promised governmental "transparency"! They serve masters that are not the people (megacorporations and their elite). They peddle "patriotism" but introduce foreign models of the social contract that negate traditional Canadian "middle of the road" progressivism (Health Care..) They, more than any Canadian government I can't think of (outside of war), have done more to suppress, spin and control information flows.

         The irony does not end there. Professor Jarvis of the Mowat center contacted the guy who did the New York Times interactive census map. In typical liberal American style the Times journalist expressed surprise, assuming that, of the two societies, Canada was the more liberal, the more transparent, the more open. American liberals often make this mistake, harking back to the "good old days" when, on many matters, Canada generally tended to the left of the US. American liberals seem to have failed to take note of the damage that, first, the corrupt, divided and corrupt Chrétien Liberals did to this country and second, the profound deepening of that wounding of the body politic and ethics by the Harperite neocon wanabes.

Lies, lies, lies and more damned lies..

Populism once more rears its ugly head in Canada

      Maxime Bernier, conservative backbencher, has claimed that he received "thousands" of complaints from Canadian citizens concerning the intrusiveness of the long form census back in 2006 when he was industry minister.


     However, a CBC follow up has revealed that - untransparently - the truth may not have been well served by M. Bernier and his anti-long form Conservative supporters. The actually number of complaints generated by the 2006 census was not "thousands" but just under a thousand, of which an impressive twenty-two were complaints about census question "intrusiveness" - 22 ! And for twenty-two complaints we scrap the long form - at high cost to the taxpayer, while reducing the - internationally recognized - effectiveness of the government's data collection capacity. Incredible! - but why would any party - especially one so committed to "cutting fat" and waste - deliberately waste taxpayer money to reduce the effectiveness of a well-run government program??



Is that an ideological rat we smell?
       
        As is so often the case with this curiously untransparent government - which ran on a platform of transparency - one suspects that the truth lies deeper than appearences. The message conveyed by Conservative MPs is that Canadian citizens' "freedoms" are being trampled on and they didn't like it. 

       But whose freedoms exactly? The twenty two people who actually did complain about the long form census questions' intrusiveness? Or, perhaps more pertinently, those groups receiving funding and who depend upon accurate sociological data to determine funding levels? Little groups (linguistic minorities..), disenfranchised groups, municipalities (especially smaller and rural ones - ironically just the folk who tend to vote Conservative!)..? Politically expendable groups..? 

      One suspects that we have another case here of our neocon wanabe government playing the populist card to its hard core voter base. Whip up the angst and /or ire of the rednecks against convenient scapegoat groups to win the cheap vote..

      No policy, no program, no political vision, philosophy or thinking required but instead the easy recourse to the basest, lowest common demoninator; scapegoat bashing: "artists", "intellectuals", "elites" (unspecified), "peaceniks", "baby killers", "atheists", "tree huggers",..

      It's a low blow but, hey, politics is a dirty game.. even for those who promised us "transparency", "responsible government", "law and order", and even "justice" (apparently this does not include "social justice" since the long form census provided data required by government programs providing a measure of social justice and equity..)