With all the blogosphere talking about the potential for Stevie scrapping the long census form; one should stop and ask a few questions. This is, after all, Stevie, the master tactician. One must question the timing of all of this. Not only is it the middle of summer. This is basically happening on the heels of the senate passing Bill c-9; Steve’s near perfect storm. Yes, folks were talking about it before, but not as much as they are now and the Harpercons are only now calling emergency meetings to deal with the debacle. I can’t help but wonder, had all the senators shown up and the bill had been defeated, and Steve got his election call, would we even be discussing the potential abolition of the manditory long census form? I’m not inclined to think so.
In spite of a rocky start, Iggy’s bus tour is starting to get some positive reviews. There are some who are even starting to say he may even pull this off. Steve and his cheerleaders had to have been paying attention to this. Steve figures it’s time to knock the wheels off that bus tour. It has been put on hold until Wednesday. Yes, Steve couldn’t risk Iggy possibly starting to make inroads with Canadians or even some of the media couldn’t he?
Ex-Lax Bernier has already drawn the line in the sand:
“The opposition will have to explain to Canadians why they want the state and the government of Canada to know lots of details from their private lives. They will have to answer that question,” Conservative MP Maxime Bernier told The Canadian Press.
The question becomes, how does Iggy counter this one? I know many prog bloggers think this is a no brainer. It ain’t that simple. All a Harpercon and one of their tea-baggers has to do is utter the word “nanny state” and everybody at Timmy Horton’s may well be in an uproar. I mean, a campaign slogan like, “If elected, I promise to put Canadians back in jail if they don’t provide private info about themselves”. Eeek!
It seems that getting Canadians to register their firearms is an all out invasion of privacy; imagine a long census form.
Funny how that works; they don’t mind cops inventing their own laws as they go along, busting into people’s homes at 4Am without a warrant (or refusing to show one), but balk at answering a government questionnaire. They have no problem with the Americans having all info about Canadian travellers simply flying over the US without even landing on their soil. They love their police state.
Yes, Steve will more than definitely send Iggy spiralling down yet again over the census. I’m not saying Iggy can’t overcome the challenge. It’s just he’s going to have to be careful.
Reality is that since Evangelical Christians, Steve’s best friends and co-parishioners as well as Jewish groups, who Steve is currently pandering to to steal votes away from the Liberals, wants to keep the manditory census long form; I imagine Steve will relent and keep the damned thing as he needs every one of their votes to get a shot at that majority. But not before he sends Iggy spiralling yet again.
Case in point: we haven’t heard all that much from Camp NDP on the subject, yet we know that The NDP has also spoken against the scrapping of the Manditory long Census form, yet I haven’t found anything indicating that they will be at this emergency pow wow called by the Harpercons, how come? Is it because we haven’t heard from Jack, himself? Or even Deputy leader, Mulcair the mouth?
As for the Bloc Quebecois, we haven’t heard from them, but, Quebecers, like with any federal bureaucracy probably don’t really care about the census and feel that it is irrelevent to them.
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Excellent analysis!
I think that this issue is a perfect “parliament is dysfunctional” trigger for Steve to call an election a few weeks before parliament resumes in September. Whether or not the length of the census becomes an election issue is not the framing the Liberals should take. The issue that ought to be debated is the character of Stephen Harper. Is it not a reflection of Harper’s character that he chooses to fill a budget with all sorts of non-budgetary items prior to a summer recess, and then threaten an election if the SENATE doesn’t do what he wants? Isn’t it a reflection of his character when he tries to axe the census on a quiet Friday during the summer break?
Harper’s sticky fingerprints are all over this. Iggy ought to give his marching orders to the committee or whoever is going to review this stupid thing and go back on his tour to energize his base and candidates in preparation for an election surrounding the character of Master Harper.
Hard data obtained from the anonymous census long-form clearly helps in setting public policy and planning. This hard data provides the public with vital information that helps them make the case for many government-financed initiatives. Do some initiatives go against the Harper conservatives vision of what the public should be entitled to? In the absence of hard census data, the conservatives can ignore well-supported arguments and instead implement their view of what public policy and planning should be. No wonder they have dug in their heals on this issue, and keep spouting off their silly talking points that the government will put you in jail if you fail to fill in the unanimous census long-form questionnaire.