#71 The Sanctity of Bathrooms

Top secret fact: I have ONE bathroom in my apartment.

I don’t know what drove them to do it, but the outgoing government was extremely determined to downgrade the capacity of Statistics Canada to understand the population and follow the trends. They did this by eliminating the mandatory long-form census and replacing it with a voluntary household survey t5hat statisticians agreed would not provide the same quality of data.

The census is conducted in Canada every five years. Before the government cancellation of it, the long form version was distributed to every fifth household (I may be slightly off on that one); everyone else completed the short form. Every time, there were a handful of people who resisted the mandatory completion of their census declaration, and these people could be prosecuted under the Statistics Act.

When the government acted to eliminate the mandatory long-form census, they claimed there were lots of complaints (never quantified or substantiated) that pushed them to do that and started repeating their catch phrase that the government has no business knowing how many bathrooms you have. They then also made the mistake of pretending that the head of Statistics Canada had assured them that the quality of the data would be equivalent, which he had not done. As a point of personal and professional pride, Munir Sheikh publicly distanced himself from that attributed statement and resigned his post. Canada’s census was also removed as a source of reliable comparative information by international statistics bodies.

I guess in a world where you can invent an outcry and falsely attribute statements to a professional in his field, you just don’t need reliable data.

Further reading here. 

Classified plumbing
made-up statements and bold lies
Now that’s governing!