Over the past summer, the debate over the long-form census raged on, with conservatives proposing to scrape and reform the whole census process. If you haven’t been paying close attention, that’s ok. It can be kind of tiring. But it ended like this: The mandatory long-form census is now voluntary, and it’s called instead the “National Household Survey”. What was the long-form census? Well, it’s essentially a big questionnaire asking Canadians about their lives. How much money do you make? Are you an immigrant? Where did you come from? What’s your education? How many kids do you have? How many times do you go to the washroom in a day, on average? Ok so maybe that last one wasn’t there. You get the picture.
And it was mandatory, meaning if you didn’t fill it out, you pay a fine or go to jail. Yikes. The belief was, that if it weren’t mandatory, no one would be bothered because they are too busy pursuing life. The goal of the survey: develop a better picture of Canadians from the west coast, across every province and territory, to the east coast. Which brings me to my next point: Census’ and government planning are like purchasing rap music.
When you think of emerging rap styles in the 80’s and 90’s, it is often broken down into two camps: West Coast rappers (like Dr. Dre, Ice-T, Ice Cube, Snoop and Tupac) and East Coast rappers (Biggie, Nas, Run DMC, Jungle Brothers, etc.). Lets say the East and West coast rappers are the most popular and sell the most albums out of all rap genres. If you were to look at the rap charts for purchasing suggestions, it would seem like East and West coast rap are the most prevalent and popular, so you decide to spend all your money buying CD’s from these two genres. But wait. Did the charts give you an accurate description of the actual rap you like? No, it just suggested two popular themes of where to spend your money. As it turns out, you’re real preference is Southern Rap (think Outkast, B.o.B, Missy Elliott), but unfortunately southern rap doesn’t sell enough records yet, to make the top 10 charts or the radio, so you’ve never heard of it.
This is the main idea with the census: by forcing people to fill it out, the government gets a better sense of the country and where to spend your hard-earned tax dollars. Marginalized groups that lack public services can be identified on the survey, and perhaps the government will recognize this by implementing greater support services. Seems like an effective solution.
Back to rapping: pretend you sent out a survey to every rapper, asking them about their rap style. You would get a back survey’s indicating rappers who are neither West coast OR East coast. You would get back some survey’s declaring different rapper’s styles, such as: Crunk, Ghettotech, Battle rap, Conscious rap, Christian rap, etc. etc. Now you realize what you’re missing out on!
So why did the Conservatives want to scrap the mandatory long-form census? Here are 4 reasons why the conservatives wanted to scrap the long form census:
1-Invades people’s privacy, Big Brother is watching, Government needs to step back.
2- It’s wrong to fine people (or send them to jail) for not doing it
3-Waste of money, the data isn’t worth the price; make more room in the budget for other stuff (let private Interest groups spend their own money on getting information)
4- People were complaining about it
How you stand on the issue is up to you; weigh the pros and cons, and make an informed decision. Do you think the government will get an accurate picture of Canada without the survey? Here are some questions: How do Internet marketing companies get information? How about just looking at the consumer trends within regions? How accurate can it be, if it’s only mandatory for 20% of the population?
Personally, I think the mandatory long-form census was pretty valuable. But I also think it’s distribution could have been managed more effectively, and the questions slightly changed. But that’s only my opinion. Make your own!
-Questions found on the new voluntary National Household Survey: http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/NHS-ENM/ref/Questionnaires/2011NHS-ENM-eng.cfm#Q9
-Liberal Arguments:
-Conservative Arguments: http://www.canada.com/Tories+agree+explain+decision+scrap+long+form+census/3293562/story.html (not that comprehensive, there are probably better links for this)
I like the rap comparison...very original!
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