Why is the Census Not an Election Issue?

All the opposition parties objected to scrapping the long-form census. But at election time, they've gone silent.

During the summer of 2010, the Harper government cancelled the mandatory long-form census, a decision that was met with stalwart opposition. The head of Statistics Canada, Munir Sheikh, resigned over this decision. Francophone minorities outside Quebec protested, as did many religious groups. Academics who rely on the census were outraged, and economists balked at the idea of not having reliable demographic data. It is somewhat surprising, then, that no opposition party has offered a policy plank aimed at bringing back the census and galvanizing the large cross-section of Canadians who think it’s an important part of ensuring all citizens count.

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But the cancellation of the census was a long time ago. Really, it is last summer’s news. However, given what was said last summer, it’s hard to believe that all the parties have accepted the Conservative rationale – the idea that people don’t want to have a mandatory census because they find it too intrusive when their data is used to inform sound policy decisions. That said, if no opposition parties bring this issue to the table, they are sending the message that they agree with this view. The only alternative explanation is that they think they would lose the debate.

There isn’t a broader theoretical or political message behind the idea to put the census into the electoral debate. It’s simply a matter of subjecting to public scrutiny something that was scrapped behind closed doors. In doing so we can amend, rather than cancel, the central basis for demographic data collection in Canada. For instance, we can eliminate jail time as a punitive measure for those who refuse to fill out the long-form census. But we cannot make such amendments, it seems, unless we goad those seeking to represent us into taking up this issue once again. For it appears that, at least at the present time, Canadian politicians are more interested in arguing over “election narratives” and the rules of debates than in having the discussion that Canadians tried to have, and – it may very well turn out – still want to engage in.