#TellVicEverything
As far as protests go, it's fairly mild and a bit passive-aggresive, but it sure beats occupying a park.
Labels: Vic Toews
Labels: Vic Toews
Labels: Dalton McGuinty, Don Drummond, Ontario Budget 2012
Labels: 2012 NDP leadership race, Brian Topp, Paul Dewar, Thomas Mulcair

Labels: Craig Scott, Grant Gordon, Toronto Danforth by election

Even the budget name sounds like it was focus group tested to find the title least likely to offend: Investing in People. After all, who's against investing in people? And who's against spending a bit more on health care and education, holding taxes steady, and just kind of hoping the price of oil increases so that everything works out? Things seem to be going fairly well in Alberta and Redford seems to be fairly popular, so why do anything even remotely controversial that could rock the boat, with an election on the horizon?Labels: Alberta budget, Allison Redford
So the 2011 census results are being released today, or at least some results are. Is anyone else as surprised as I am that there is any data to announce? I mean in the summer of 2010, you would have thought the statistical world was coming to an end and taking much of the intellectual foundation of modern civilization with it just because the Harper government had decided to make the long-form census voluntary rather than mandatory.
Experts were recruited from the United States to tell the Toronto Star that the Tories move would “lower the quality and raise the cost of information” gathered by StatsCan.
It was Canadians’ “civic duty” to comply with government demands for information about ethnicity, education level, sources of income, types of housing, number and ages of children and their activities, sexual orientation, family relationships, divisions of household labour, recreation and so on.
On the other hand, if you were sceptical about government’s ability to solve big problems, no matter how accurate the inputs it uses to analyse the sources and solutions, you tended to think a voluntary census would be just as useful as a mandatory one, and far less destructive of individual rights in a democracy.
But, really, are the figures produced by having StatsCan select 18.8% of homes based on pure statistical theory going to be so much more useful in setting public policy than the figures from 23.1% of self-selecting, voluntary homes?
Besides, I have my doubts about how untainted data from the mandatory census was anyway. When I wrote about this issue two years ago, I received a handful of messages from former census planners telling me that it was routine practice at StatsCan to send long forms to the same households census after census. If a household had shown itself willing to fill out a long form before, it was likely to receive another the next time.
And my favourite: The Tories’ move was “enormously destructive” of morale at Statistics Canada. Huh!? How could that possibly matter?
Labels: Census, Lorne Gunter
Labels: Don Drummond, Fundraising, pensions
Labels: 2013 Liberal leadership race
Naheed Nenshi: The superstar Mayor of Calgary set Twitter abuzz when he tried out his French at a Toronto speech last year. I'd love to see Naheed toss his cowboy hat into the ring, but we're still 5 or 10 years away from having this conversation. At the rate we're going, the Liberals will have cycled through another three leaders by the time Nenshi is ready to run.
Amanda Lang: To the best of my knowledge, there is only one Liberal in the country floating her name as a possible leadership candidate, but it may not be as far fetched as it sounds. We've seen media personalities jump to politics before, and as a business reporter she could make the economy her issue. And hey, her dad was a Liberal MP! I have no idea how she'd fare in the political game, but the idea of a well-spoken, attractive 41 year old woman from Manitoba leading the party certainly sounds good on paper.
Siobhan Coady: Any tour of "defeated rising stars" should include Coady, a well liked MP who can ask tough questions with emotion and confidence.
Robert Ghiz: The 37 year old Premier of PEI has said "never say no" but wants to spend time with his two young children.Labels: 2013 Liberal leadership race, Amanda Lang, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Jane Stewart, Mark Carney, Mark Holland, Martha Hall Findlay, Naheed Nenshi, Navdeep Bains, Ralph Goodale, Siobhan Coady