OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government appears to be suffering a substantial amount of pain over the census controversy for a questionable amount of gain, according to some political observers who are baffled at why the Conservatives are pursuing the abrupt policy decision with such conviction.
The government’s move to scrap the mandatory long-form census in 2011 in favour of a voluntary one has prompted a fierce backlash from a broad range of groups who say it will produce a skewed body of data that will compromise the ability of policy-makers to make evidence-based decisions.
Opposition mounted to such a point this week that the country’s chief statistician, Munir Sheikh, resigned from his post as head of Statistics Canada in protest.
Despite the calls from municipalities, provincial governments, statisticians, academic bodies, economists and researchers from many disciplines to reverse his decision, Industry Minister Tony Clement has shown no signs of backing down.
He and other Conservative MPs argue that the questions asked on the long-form census are too intrusive and that Canadians should not be forced to answer them under threat of facing a fine or jail time. While Canada’s privacy commissioner has only fielded a handful of complaints about the census in the last decade, the Tories say they’ve heard from upset constituents.
Now that the census controversy has ballooned into a full-fledged political drama, questions are being raised about who the Harper government was trying to appeal to with this decision, why it won’t back down given the widespread opposition, and whether all this trouble will be worth it in the long term.
Tom Flanagan, a former chief of staff to Harper who has a long history with the Reform, Canadian Alliance and Conservative parties, is among those puzzled by the government’s motivation behind the census decision.
“It’s just never been an issue in the Conservative movement,” he said in an interview. “It just literally comes out of nowhere as far as I can see.”
Flanagan, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said while some of the privacy concerns may be legitimate, the way the Conservatives have handled this is completely misguided.
“I think it was an exercise in bad government to suddenly spring this on the public without any previous discussion, no consultation at all,” he said. “You don’t deal with the public that way in a democracy.”
The House of Commons Industry, Science and Technology committee is set to hold hearings on the census beginning Tuesday, where Clement and Sheikh will be among the witnesses giving a public account of their views, meaning the government will be fending off the backlash for still some time.
The Tories have been accused of pandering to “fringe” supporters within the Conservative base and attempting to shrink the role of government in people’s lives. The NDP’s Charlie Angus suggested the move is taken out of a Republican party handbook and Liberal MP Ralph Goodale agrees that it’s an ideologically-driven measure.
“It is very clear that Mr. Harper’s motivation is getting this troublesome data out of the way so fact-based arguments are not available to contradict the ideological direction he wants to go,” Goodale said at a news conference this week.
Flanagan and others predict the Conservatives will alienate more supporters than they will appease with this decision.
“They are alienating a lot of people who have supported the government and would like to continue supporting the government, people who are fundamentally Conservatives but see this as just bad government,” said Flanagan. “It’s not clear to me what they’re going to pick up from this politically and they’re irritating a lot of people who would like to be their friends.”
Ned Franks, an emeritus professor and parliamentary expert from Queen’s University, suspects the Tories didn’t anticipate such an adverse reaction, but agrees that they’ve put support from swing voters in particular at risk.
“I have a strong feeling that as this plays out it will not help the government,” he said, noting this is not the only occasion where the use of statistics has been caught up in the policy agenda of the Conservatives.
“Crime rates keep going down and yet they want to get tougher on crime,” Franks said in an interview. “The government is appealing to its base on the sentiment that you should be tough on criminals but there is no evidence . . . that putting more people in prisons actually reduces crime rates.”
Conservative Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu recently reacted to the latest crime rate numbers from Statistics Canada by saying the agency had manipulated them and he questioned their methodology.
Critics of the Tory government say it’s undermined the internationally-renowned agency and damaged its reputation. How much damage, if any, the census controversy will in turn cause the Conservatives will depend on where the debate goes next.
Flanagan said if he still worked for Harper, he’d advise the prime minister to back away from the decision.
Not necessarily shelve it, he said, but at the very least, the prime minister could call a task force to review options for a new census form.
He also noted, however, that Harper “doesn’t back down easily” and is not known for reversing course.
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