The Census Long Form: Celebrate Coercion as Pro-Science

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Nov 2015

You have to hand to the Hamilton Spectator, they are unabashedly elitist.  In an editorial of this date, the Spectator offered that the "Long-form census is annoying but necessary."  The editorial proclaimed, "...the long-form census is the best tool we have to make evidence-based, people-centric public policy decisions.  Canada Pension Plan, employment insurance, Old Age Security, public transit, public health investment, education and social service - these are just a few of the areas benefiting from the best possible data.  Lack of information means deteriorating data, and inadequate data means bad decisions....There is really no credible, logical argument against the benefits of better data.  And yet a sizable percentage of us remain adamantly opposed to the mandatory census, which explains why the Harper government's decision was unpopular in the academic, science, and public policy world, but quite the opposite in the land of broader public opinion....the sad result of [Harper's] decision is all the data we would have had for the decade in between is gone. We don't get another chance at it.  That's tragic."

Winston S. Churchill once remarked that, "in a democracy you must occasionally defer to the wishes of other people."

The Spectator is saying that you stupid people who pay for this democracy should shut up and do what your betters tell you to do, because you don't know what's good for you.  The real folly of the piece lies in the assumption that better data leads to better decisions.  This is a dialectical argument, which means that common sense leads us to accept that it is generally true.  But it ain't always so.  The assumption does not conceive that there may be occasions when the democratic majority don't want the government to be making certain kinds of decisions at all, and depriving it of data is a means of preventing it from doing so.  One thing the government can't do is sell the data to private parties for profit, very detailed marketing data that the private parties cannot get cheaply in any other way.

Anyhow, the Spectator sides with those who think the long-form census with the power of government coercion behind it is just dandy and there are no respectable arguments on the other side.

Or maybe there are:

The Spectator can hardly be regarded as a defender of Canadian freedoms.  Its justification of the long form census is the case in point.

Several years ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper got himself condemned as being anti-science over the long form census.  Harper moved to protect Canadians from bureaucrats whom many thought abused the coercive powers granted to them by the government.  These bureaucrats asked too many intrusive questions concerning citizens’ private lives that many people thought the government had no business asking about.  The bureaucrats believed that because Canadians answered the questions under threat of fines and imprisonment, they would get truthful answers.  Supporters of limited government were concerned about the scope of the long form census, and the Conservative government responded in accordance with those beliefs.  It limited the scope, and deprived the bureaucrats of the comfort of believing that coercive power meant truth in answering.  Depriving bureaucrats of their coercive power was condemned as “anti-science.”

I believe in limited government.  I oppose tax increases and new government expenditures because they increase the power of government.  The presumption of the intrusive long form census is that the government will employ power to implement decisions that, in new and creative ways, increase the power and scope of government based upon the results of that census.  The Liberal party believes in a large and powerful government, and so it naturally re-introduced the long form census, and will likely make it punishable not to fully answer it.

One would think that re-imposing coercion would be celebrated as being “pro-science.”   It would be foolish, however, to think so.  While statistics is a science, sociology is not, and the products of the science are going to be fed into a non-science to produce government policy.  As polling firms are now discovering, private citizens no longer feel compelled to tell the truth to pollsters, with the result that polling numbers are skewed and useless.  People may come to realize that the likelihood of their actually being punished by submitted false information on the long-form census is negligible, and might just spoof the census for the joy of being mischievous.

Successful democratic government requires the consent and cooperation of the people.  The new Trudeau government would be wise to consider the decision Stephen Harper made in respect of the census before it gets too presumptuous about its mandate to govern.

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Choose the Christians

Vincent J. Curtis

17 Nov 2015

A couple of months ago I argued among friends that if we are going to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees quickly, we should select Christian families.  First, the Christians are the ones most persecuted, and families are the most in need.  They are also the ones most likely to be peaceable.  What we should not do is take in large numbers of single, young men. That would be asking for trouble, since the ability to vet these people is practically non-existent.

The Hamilton Spectator, in its inimitable way, cares nothing about the opinions of those who want to be careful about this.  In fact, polls show that Quebecers are the most worried about taking in large numbers of Muslim refugees in the wake of the attacks this year in Paris.  The Spectator is in the position of accusing French Quebecers of being racist Islamophobes because of their empathy for their cultural and linguistic kinsmen in France.  For the sake of utter foreigners, The Spectator condemns our French fellow-countrymen: well done Spectator!

I put the case briefly before the Spectator, as below.  Of course, the Spectator launched editorials, some packaged as news stories, condemning the idea that we should be careful about admitting large numbers of young, single Muslim males, or of using selection criteria of any kind.

You would think that given the racism and sexism rampant on university campuses these days, and the condemnation of "white, male privilege," the Spectator might be sensitive to the concern about bringing in large numbers of young, single males from Syria who have extremely sexist attitudes and a high sense of privilege.  Apparently not.  The compartmentalization of Politically Correct thinking is truly a thing to behold.  It keeps modern liberalism from becoming aware of its plentiful self-contractions.

The opinions expressed below have now become practically self-evident truths among right-thinking individuals and political parties south of the border.



Justin Trudeau can save himself and Canada a lot of trouble without having to debunk any “myths” about the dangerous refugee.

All he has to do is select his 25,000 Syrian refugees from among Christian families, and by families I mean Mom and Dad and children.

Why Christian?  There are two simple reasons.  The first is that it is the Christians who are having their heads chopped off by ISIS.  Secondly, and most important, there are no Christians working for ISIS or any other Islamist terror group.

Why families?  Because they are the most in need.

Picking 25,000 “Syrian” “refugees” from among the millions of displaced persons in the Middle East and in Europe should be easy and fast.  Show the Canadian diplomat your Syrian passport, declare that one is a Christian, prove it by making the sign of the cross, and you get your visa issued on the spot.  All 25,000 could be chosen and in Canada by Christmas.  The Canadian diplomats could begin combing the refugee camps immediately.

As they say in Paris these days, “Voila.”
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Whoring Canada for the sake of Moral Vanity

Vincent J. Curtis

18 Nov 2015

The Hamilton Spectator's normally sound editorial cartoonist, Graeme Mackay stepped in it today by drawing a cartoon that shows Canadians like myself trying to frighten away a boatload of Muslim refugees from Canada's shore.  This cartoon follows the Spectator editorial policy of supporting Islam regardless of circumstances and of making ad hominem attacks against those who disagree with them.  In addition to this cartoon, the Spectator republished as a news story an editorial written by Toronto Star reporter Amal Ahmed Aibaz.  In the story, Aibez, who is an Egyptian immigrant to Canada and who wears a hijab, relates a incident in which a woman accosted her in a washroom and told her to remove her hijab.  The story was headlined, "Whoa, because I wear a hijab, I'm a terrorist?  I can't even kill a spider."

My comments are below:

Today’s editorial cartoon by Graeme Mackay illustrates once again the failure of the Spectator to put a cogent argument.  The cartoon shows a life raft full of frightened women and children coming to land on Canada’s shore.  On the shore are raging rednecks frightening these people and demanding that they leave.

If the cartoon were at all accurate, the life raft would be full of young, military-aged men, not women and children.  The shore they would be landing on would be Greek or Italian.  If a life raft full of Muslim women and children were to turn up on Canada’s shore, having crossed the Atlantic Ocean, I would be all for taking them in.

The portrayal of evil rednecks on Canada’s shore depicted in the cartoon is another example of the Spectator making attacks on the character of people who disagree with them.  In logic, this is called an ad hominem attack.

Let me cast the editorial position of the Spectator as I, one of those rednecks, see it:  you are whoring my country to satisfy your moral vanity.

The problems of the Middle East are not our problems, and we should not make them so.  We have too nice a country now to mess it up importing other people’s fights.  Anyone familiar with the 1,400 year conflict between Islam and the Christian West, ought to realize the foolishness of creating an indigestible Muslim community in our midst.  If you want to see the effects of that policy, look at Europe.

Elsewhere in the paper today is an editorial piece by a self-pitying Muslim woman who recounted an event in a woman’s washroom.  A women told her to get rid of her hijab and a shouting match ensued.  This Muslim woman was originally from Egypt but has lived in Canada since she was six years old.  Apparently, we are supposed to accept this symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause as though it were part of her culture, that she can’t help it, and that she is not a terrorist.  Well, the hijab forms no part of Egyptian culture, and having lived in Canada since she was a child makes one wonder where she picked up on the idea of wearing it.

The fact is that while she is not a terrorist, she is an Islamic Supremacist.  She is not integrating into Canadian society but deliberately standing apart from it.  Most importantly, she forms a part of the landscape in which terrorists can hide.

That is the fear of bringing in large numbers of Muslims into Canada: not only may there be terrorists among them but the Muslim community imported creates the place in which terrorism can be incubated and can hide here in Canada.  This is not an irrational fear, because it is actually happening in Europe.

I wish the editorial board of the Spectator the best of luck coming up with rational arguments.

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