When Smart Parties Make Stupid Decisions

The Harper government's decision to make the long-form census voluntary is terrible policy, but there is method in their madness.

The government’s decision to replace the mandatory long census with one that is voluntary is terrible policy. That much is obvious. The information gathered from the long census and its analysis is invaluable data that is essential to helping numerous crucial sectors of society make smart decisions that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our society.

It is a crucial resource, for example, that helps businesses do everything from planning the placement of new retail outlets to determining which TV programs are canned. It also is somewhat important to the everyday experience of Canadians insofar as it allows various layers of government to make evidence-based decisions about things like optimal traffic light timing, how many hospital beds should be funded and where they should be located, or where public health authorities should target their efforts in the case of a flu pandemic.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Economist recently published a 15-page special report on the importance of data and data mining. The report framed data mining as the equivalent of the knowledge economy’s new gold rush and argued that increased data gathering and its transparent release by governments holds the potential to significantly and concretely improve both GDP and a variety of other quality of life indicators in many countries.

It is also very clear that making the long census voluntary substantially reduces the robustness and reliability of the data collected – potentially making it unrepresentative and unreliable at best, and at worst making it profoundly misleading and entirely incompatible with previous decades of data.

This is why virtually everyone who deals with the knowledge economy – from senior bank analysts to business groups to municipalities to advocacy groups to social statisticians – has spoken with a unanimous voice against this shift in policy. This is why the head of StatsCan resigned rather than accept a policy such as this. This is why there are now reports emerging that senior members of the Conservative caucus may have been strongly opposed to the decision. This is why even the National Post couldn’t support the decision, calling it “profoundly undignified governance.”

The unanimity of condemnation, however, leaves us with a much harder question to answer. If it is so obviously bad policy, why did the government decide to do it? And why was it announced now, in the doldrums of summer when even the passing of an omnibus budget-cum-a-bunch-of-other-unrelated-legislation bill barely raised notice across the land?

If we want to answer that question, we have to enter the realm of educated speculation. And in this territory, it’s always wise to follow the lead of the great detective himself, the esteemed Sherlock Holmes, and start by ruling out all those possible reasons that clearly weren’t the basis for the decision.

It doesn’t seem, for example, that this decision is the result of the government importing best practices from other countries. None of our peer countries are breaking down the door to introduce voluntary census forms as a cutting edge data collection practice.

Nor can it really be a consequence of the government’s much vaunted focus on “accountability” – since accountability requires reliable data and evidence-based analysis to ensure that the money it spends on programs actually achieves its objectives.

And it certainly can’t be one of the promised deficit slaying tactics, since StatsCan has estimated that it will cost anywhere from an extra $5 to $30 million to offer a voluntary long census that still ensures anything even remotely resembling reliable data.