Why the long form census is needed

I want to add my little bit's worth to the census debate.

While there's a one in five chance that one would get the long form census -- it's just dropped off at every fifth household -- it so happens that I or my parents got the long form nearly every time over the last thirty years.   This was the case with me in 2006.   Did I find it intrusive?   Actually, no more intrusive than filling out an income tax return, quite frankly.   We allow the government to invade our privacy briefly to get a tax refund or to determine what we owe at the end of the year.   It's one of the prices of citizenship.

So is the case with the census form.    And in a time of very short revenues, I find it unbelieveable that the feds would actually want to get rid of a lucrative source of money that doesn't rely on something that everyone pays out of pocket (taxes or user fees).   Countless businesses, social services organizations, the media, even churches, use the data mine to plot out all sorts of strategies.   The government doesn't hand this out for free, they put a pretty price on it.   You think that companies like fast food chains or home improvement big boxes pick their locations by chance?

Another big customer is the provinces.   For the big ticket items -- health, education and welfare -- they need reliable data.   Making some of the key information "voluntary" erodes the value of the data, and therefore renders it unreliable.    It's also one of the reasons why I brisk at the "census revolts" that some engage in where some refuse to fill in the forms out of principle.   Either they don't like government at all, or they believe that because they are "sovereign" (e.g. the approach taken by some native groups) they owe it no regard.

If one form is left unfilled, that could be the difference between another few thousand per student transfer to school boards.   Or what pushes a province over the threshold to get another Member of Parliament.

And as for the line "I don't want the state in my bedroom" or "how many bedrooms I have, no one needs to know" -- well, actually, no one is asking what one does in bed, just how many are in it.   Urban sprawl tends to be supported (I think, anyway) by those who think it's wrong to intrude on one's personal life yet see no contradiction in intruding on what's left of our rural areas which are going to be needed to feed a growing population.

If farmers have to fill in a version of the long form (and I believe they still do) then why not the rest of us?   It's about an hour of our time.   One hour that sets priorities for the public and private sectors for the next five years.   It's no problem with me.

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Eliminating the penny? Two bits for some thoughts ...

It's been discussed, somewhat jokingly in private members bills, over the years.   But now it's none other than our own Canadian national mint that is saying it's time to do what Australia and New Zealand have done for their respective currencies, and what two Euro zone states -- Finland and Netherlands -- have done, eliminate the one cent coin and go to what's called "Swedish rounding" (round to the nearest five cents for prices ending in 3,4,6 and 7; and to the nearest zero for 1,2,8 and 9).

Why?   The coin long ago stopped being copper.   We tried zinc for a while like America does for their Lincolns, but even that got expensive.   And the steel blanks we use nowadays cost a cent and a half each, so the money's not even worth what it's made of anymore.

Hoarding pennies is a long standing tradition and many churches still have "penny sales" every now and then.   And there's a lot of sentiment attached to any denomination being removed.   It's not like the switchover from the one and two dollar bills to coins which were quite well received here -- unlike in the States, where the one dollar coin is still viewed very much with suspicion and many still believe the $2 bill is fake (it's not) or even "unlucky".

I would have thought this was bonkers at one time, but it might actually be a good idea if it was implemented properly.    This isn't a massive operation like "decimalization" in the UK and Ireland back in 1972 (remember pounds / shillings / pence with 20 shillings in the pound and 12 denari in the shilling -- no wonder why they went to decimals!) or the Euro "big bang" in 2002 when 12 currencies had to be triangulated.   I'd like to meet someone who still has a "half crown" (2s /6d which converted to 12½ p).   Or a half pence for that matter!

But we'd have to do it carefully.   Given we're moving to polymer bank notes beginning next year (in an attempt to stop counterfeiting, and we should) it might not be the right time.   However, since the Aussies and Kiwis figured it out and PMS is so determined to maintain our Commonwealth links at any price (even if many of the other member states are irredeemably corrupt) it's something we may want to ask their advice on.   And of course, we need a full debate in Parliament.   Maybe this is one thing in which a free vote would be warranted.

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"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" ... and, untendered plane contracts

Two thoughts today.

1) HT to Crystal Ocean:  I've heard of appealing to "The Base" (which, ironically, is also one of the rougher translations of Al Qaeda).   But if these numbers from Angus Reid about what people think about evolution in Canada, the US and the UK are correct then our education system -- or at least the one they have "out west" -- is going to hell in a hand basket as it has in the states, and it has major ramifications for the central government's research funding councils and what could happen if election trends continue the way they are; unless we insist that reason will guide our faith and not the other way around.   And more importantly, that reasonable people lead our country.

In other words, the "base" being appealed to is that which wants to so manipulate our education system that it leads long-term to desired voting results rather than the free reasoned choice it ought to be.

Last time I checked the Bible, it said "'Come now, and let us reason together' saith the LORD" (Isaiah 1:18).   It does not say "“Faith is not a product of reason … Believers are not to be led by logic. We are not to be led by logic. We are not even to be led by good sense.”  That, by the way, is Kenneth Copeland.

For the record, I think evolution is the most plausible explanation for God's creation.   Intelligent design, as it's whitewashed called nowadays, is anything but intelligent.

What is really surprising is that support for the theory of evolution is highest in those parts of Great Britain that are generally among also the most religious -- anything outside of London and in Scotland and Wales.   But even London (58%) rated higher than Alberta (51%) and Manitoba and Saskatchewan (50%).   Can't tell from the poll if Northern Ireland was surveyed but I would suspect that this is something that Catholics and Protestants would agree with also.   But that's also still better than the States, where just 47% nationwide think evolution is the correct explanation.

Great Britain ... they actually get it more than we or the Americans do.   Hmm.

2)  The Liberals are trying to get the Defence Committee reconvened to get the government to explain how the pending purchase of the next generation of fighter jets -- 65 Lockheed Martin F-35s -- got untendered.

Our fleet of F-5s (or as we classify them, CF-116s) and F-18s are in woeful need of replacement and we need to start the process ASAP.    But one of the principles of a huge purchase of this nature ($9 billion up front, plus another $7 billion for maintenance over the anticipated lifetime of the planes) is that there should a tendering process.   We just don't "design build" unless it's a toll road (which is a provincial jurisdiction in any case).

As now MP and former Capt. Marc Garneau (Canadian Navy -- Ret'd) has pointed out, we just spent $2.6 billion to refurbish the F-18s to keep them airworthy until 2017.    Was that just a make work project to get the Conservatives votes; or to "un tin hat" it, was it value for money?

Given the world we live in nowadays where terrorists can strike any time and anywhere, we just can't slap things together, building a deep sea port here and doing bit work contracts there.    If we have an integrated forces (with army, air force and navy under a unified command) we need all the pieces working together.   We also need to make sure that if we have to make foreign purchases that we don't get skunked over -- no matter who's in the corner office in the Centre Block.

For my part, I personally continue to support a concept proposed by Jean Charest way back in 1997 when he ran under the PC banner:   a "rapid reaction force" of 10-15,000 of our best men and women from all three branches, knowledgeable in each other's capabilities, with the best equipment and able to move out on 48 hours notice without any foul-ups.    And of course, backed up by the very best equipment -- following a proper sourcing process rather than feeding the friends that bite you (and that's not a misprint).

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Big Biz: Open season to plunder. Big. Effin. Surprise.

Oh neat ... besides drill baby drill,  Big Biz in America wants unlimited logging rights in that country's national forests.    Like there isn't already.   Because the same multi-park passes can be used for both parks and forests many may think that means both classes are run by the same people, and they're not.

Many people forget that while National Parks are under the jurisdiction of the Interior Department, federal treelands are under the purview of the Agriculture Department.   So it's really managed logging rather than the general free for all on most timberlands.

I don't have an issue with managed logging, but the key word is management.    It may be time to pull another Clayoquot Sound and have some more civil disobedience to get the message out that public forests are for the people's benefit, with timber dues going to the people.

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RIP George Steinbrenner

Love him or hate him, he was quite the unique character.   RIP, King George.

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Do you want nuclear waste on the Great Lakes?

We might not have much choice, it could happen as early as this fall as the first of two shipments of decommissioned steam generators weighing 110 tonnes a piece, 16 each shipment for a total of 32, are due to go overland from Bruce Power in Kincardane to Owen Sound, then around and through Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario, up the St. Lawrence and out to ocean to a facility in Sweden.

Okay, so it's going to a friendly country so maybe there's a bit of relief there.   But who knows how radioactive the metal is?   Has anyone done an assessment as to what could happen if there is a terrorist attack enroute?   Will there be no go zones for traffic while it goes through canals or will it be BAU (business as usual) with the obligatory figures crossed?

Another and possibly bigger concern is once reprocessed the materials cannot be traced on the after market.   There are huge worries about depleted uranium used as armour plating in battlefields particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan -- worries from active personnel and "embeds".   What if a paramilitary group gets its hands on the stuff?

I thought they were looking at abandoned mines in Nevada and Saskatchewan.   Whatever happened to that idea?   Oh, yeah, they have problems of their own ... Guess when we did the impossible by splitting the atom, we created new problems that can't be solved.

And now Ontario want to spend another $5 billion (read $20 billion) to build more reactors.   Yikes.   Who thinks these things through?   And the worst part is they get ex-politicians to run the generating stations rather than actual nuclear scientists.

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It's not a moral issue, it's an equality issue

A judge in the United States may have finally put that country on track to joining a number of nations that have recognized what is common sense -- that morals cannot dictate public policy regarding gay marriage.

Back in 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act which defines a marriage as one man and one woman to the exclusion of all other relationships.   A platitude may be fine to get votes especially from the most mobilized, but the effect of the federal law is that a gay partner cannot be buried next to his or her lover in a military cemetary, cannot get spousal federal social benefits, cannot apply for the spousal tax credit -- even in the five states and DC all of which do recognize same-sex marriages.   The judge rightly has said the law violates the equality provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.

But the judge, in another case, also said that the federal law also impedes on a state's right to allow gay marriages.   This is the more complicated one as many states have passed sweeping bans not just on gay marriages but also the right of gay and lesbian couples to adopt, and refuses to recognize the legitimacy of marriages entered to in other states (which of course violates Article IV).

One has to wonder if this will have an effect on the federal court in San Francisco which any day will rule on the propriety of Proposition 8.    I don't think there's a choice here -- the court has to rule to strike it down even if a majority of voters in California approved it.   There is no other option just as there was no option but to end segregation fifty years ago even though most whites at the time supported it (and many, I suspect, would like it to come back).

Whatever I personally think about gay marriage, which I have discussed before here, I don't think it's a moral issue anymore.    It is one of equal rights, period.   And for what it's worth, if courts enforce same-sex custody orders even in states where they're not "supposed" to, there's no reason why they can't take the next logical step if legislatures refuse to do so.

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Red Hill Parkway floods out ... again

The news this week that a second site is now seriously being considered for the new Ti-Cats stadium, on a greenfield no less, is raising serious questions about how committed we are to public transit improvements.   The team's owner, Bob Young, seems not at all to care about this instead favouring a "driveway to driveway" experience -- meaning more traffic gridlock.   And this is also the stadium that will host track and field and a couple of soccer matches during the 2015 Toronto Pan-Am Games.

It's a serious issue now because today the Red Hill Valley Parkway (which runs to the top of the hill where the alternate site is) got flooded out today and had to close for the second time in a week.   Despite tens of millions spent on a storm overflow system to deal with such an event, it simply couldn't cope.

The city's top engineer is now blaming the two time closure on "global warming."   Two hundred year storms in a week?    No ... we're actually used to this kind of rain during the summer.   It's our sewage plant on Woodward that can't cope with it all and causes a two foot high "lake" to back up onto the highway.    And now Mr. Young wants to build a stadium on a far less than ideal site, which could basically destroy the Eramosa Karst across the street.    Has he even spent any time in Hamilton recently and taken a look at our city plan which makes protecting greenlands and sensitive sites a priority?

Fix whatever's causing the road to flood so often, by all means.   That will probably mean a couple more overflow tanks along route.  But for heaven's sake, let's not create an even bigger disaster when 30,000 fans at the stadium will want to flush the toilet all at the same time with the filthy runaway slime running downhill, swamping dozens of cars and trucks along the way.   That will really be good for our public image which is already best summed up with the old Wayne and Shuster joke, "On a clear day, you can see Hamilton."

Stick with the West Harbour which is much more amenable to public transit -- and can better cope with a flood out situation.   Don't eat up prime agricultural lands for the sake of a few greedy football players.   Most cities would have settled on a site and done the expropriations before the bid was submitted and the shovels in the ground the day after award.    We're more than eight months past when we won, and we still haven't figured out where it should be?

It's a no-brainer.    After today's weather, I have to ask where the brains are regarding our future infrastructure.

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Can't read the signs? Pay the ticket!

One of the major park festivals here in Hamilton -- "It's Your Festival" -- wrapped up during the weekend, but people are still complaining about the special parking regulations put in place on several streets adjacent to Gage Park and how some motorists were "shocked" to get tickets of $30 or more even though the area was clearly marked "by permit only."    This was done in response to residents in the area complaining for eons about how driveways were being blocked and how side streets were impassible -- in fact for years some in the area just stay out of town for the weekend.   Not to mention the problems emergency vehicles had navigating the obstacle course -- often on streets and through neighbourhoods conceived long before the era of the car.

Those from out of town that got ticketed say they're never coming back to do anything in Hamiton, ever again.

Oh boo hoo!

I agree that perhaps some of the city parking lots down the main drags -- Main and King -- could have been set aside to handle overflow parking with shuttle buses put in place.   This is what is done for special events on the harbour front when the neighbourhoods there go on lockdown.

But ignorance is not an excuse.   And it's not like there wasn't advance warning, there was plenty of it.   So if you got a ticket, suck it up.   At least you can read ... or we presume you can.

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PMS appoints David L. Johnston next GG

An interesting but good choice.   Many may best remember Johnston as the host of The Editors, a long running chat show that ran for years on PBS and CBC News Network.   I wish him the best of luck.

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G-20 Police wanted health care workers to violate Hippocratic Oath, nurses claim

There was a story on the radio last night, not long after Pointy Head announced there would be an independent inquiry into the G-20 debacle.   The report (I think it was on Radio One) was that some health care workers were claiming they were tending to those injured during the altercation with the police and the cops were telling the nurses and doctors not to help the protestors, that it was "wrong" to do so.

This line of reasoning, if the nurses' claims are accurate, would be as silly as those neo-cons in the States who want people to stop donating money to the Red Cross because it is helping those in the fields in Afghanistan who may be on the side of the Taliban and other "irregular" forces.     Since when did the Hippocratic Oath apply only to the law abiding (presuming any laws were broken, and I don't think any were by at least the vast majority)?   Last time I checked, those in the health care business serve all regardless of political motivation.   Or they're supposed to.

If this claim is proven to be true, then it naturally raises the question whether the police planted agents provacateurs in the Black Bloc.   And if so, who in the Executive ordered such plants.   The scary thing is, at least there's a Charter of Rights to fall back on, which allows Canadians to sue the government if their rights have been violated.   Many of those who "support the police" also want to repeal the Charter and such redress guarantees on the grounds that the police are "pure" and therefore can do no wrong.

If the police want the neutrality on which health care workers operate to be repealed the police should damn well do so by petition to the legislature, not during the heat of a provacative situation like what happened in Toronto last week, so that their aims are fully transparent.

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No Hamilton Aerotropolis

You'd think with all the serviced industrial land in Hamilton, ready to go, not to mention all the brownfields, that this city would look to fill those in first for new businesses wanting to locate here.   But guess what?   After years of debate, the city fathers want to develop a "Hamilton Aerotropolis", 1173 hectares (2898 acres) of virgin farmland, around the airport and the Highway 6 bypass.   (Source:   Raise the Hammer) Land that, cleverly enough, is largely not in the "Greenbelt" protected area.

Thirty years ago I lived in a part of town that was quite literally at the edge of the urban boundary.   Matter of fact, you just had to jump a fence to cross into the property where the largest radio station in the city had its transmitter (that tells you how old I am!) -- an area long swallowed up by residential and commercial concerns.   But that was also prime farmland, and it's gone forever.

Do we really want to throw away all that farmland around the airport on the possibility that businesses will want to come here, when we already have shovel ready properties?   And that most points in Hamilton are within a 20 minute drive (and will be a twenty to twenty-five minute ride on light rail from downtown once the A-line is upgraded from the present express bus)?

Especially when just servicing the land won't even be covered by development charges even if they are hiked to more realistic levels?    And not to mention, the airline industry is shaky at the best of times, we just lost more Westjet ™ flights to Toronto, and the cargo business while quite lucrative only generates peanuts of royalties to the city coffers under the long-term lease agreement to an out-of-town developer?

And lest we forget, as we boil in another massive heatwave, greenfields act as a temperature moderator.    Pave that over, and the city core would be even hotter (even with Lake Ontario on the other side).

How moronic can we get when this city is a major regional processor of food and oilseeds, and will soon get the country's biggest bakery ... and at the same time we tell the few wheat and corn farmers we have left in Hamilton to go fuck themselves in the name of "light industry"?   What happens when there is no farmland left to create the food to service the food plants?    And the West really does become a desert?

We have lost too much farmland in Hamilton and too much forests.   Enough is enough.   No Aerotropolis!

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Canada's top spy: Nothing to apologize for

In testimony today before the House Public Safety Committee, CSIS chief Richard Fadden refused to back down from his surprising declaration a couple of weeks back that foreign governments have infiltrated local and provincial governments.

While I question why he went public while the base of his assertions were still being assessed, I don't think he should apologize or resign for doing his job.   Sure, there's a lot to be concerned about, especially if one doesn't want an entire ethnicity to be sullied.   Matter of fact, that's one of the reasons why espionage was stripped from the Mounties in the early 1980s when CSIS was created -- to provide an impartial analysis and operations unit that could perform counterintelligence competently and credibly.

But frankly, he was just stating the obvious ... that there are foreign governments who want to topple our own by any means necessary, starting with subterfuge.   And as to why one would start at the local and provincial levels, it's simply because that's where a lot of the meat and potatoes of government operates within Canada.

Discretion might have been better advised on Fadden's part.   But politicians from all parties need to wake up, and either fight the real enemies within or be prepared to spend billions more of our hard-earned money to fund retaliatory measures.   This includes but is not limited to fighting identity theft before it even happens, especially using the name of dead people.   But such counterintelligence can also be done without violating basic human rights which our enemies have never and will never respect.

The Cold War never really ended, it's just the combatants and the reasons for the hostility changed.

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Bergez in contempt -- again

The long running saga regarding the "Great Glasses" chain may finally be coming to an end, with a judge finding Bruce Bergez and his wife in contempt of court, four years after a similar ruling and an injunction demanding the stores drop their "no prescription necessary" policy for dispensing eye wear and their claims a machine could generate a "prescription" without the hassle of going to an eye doctor.   Bergez now faces two years in prison, his wife one, based on what the judge rules next month -- oh, and there's the penalties that have accumulated since 2006, now totalling somewhere around $60 million.

In a last ditch effort to save his skin, Bergez told the court this week the law regarding the eye wear business was unclear, and therefore void for vagueness.   I'm familiar with this line being used to fight civil rights violations, but not to defend one's way of doing business.

Look, I'm all in favour of making a fair buck.   But the pertinent word is fair.   And the reason why we have the requirement that a patient see a physician, optometrist or ophthalmologist to get a prescription for glasses is not just to measure visual acuity but also to determine if there are early signs of disease, something machines can't always measure reliably if at all.   Maybe I'm a bit prejudicial here in the fact I am lucky enough to have a very good eye doctor, the same one for over twenty-five years, but I am quite sure that my father's eyesight was saved because of the careful "eye" (pardon the expression) of the same doctor who found my dad had cataracts.

Would a machine find that?   Not likely.   Matter of fact, some searching I did suggests that as a class 2 medical device, the system in question requires the use of a properly licensed and trained person.   Or the fact that the blogosphere is replete with horror stories about people who didn't get the proper prescription and in rare cases even ended up in the ER.   Not to mention many insurance companies refuse to reimburse payment for services from Great Glasses, even those with a proper prescription.

What really ticked me off, though, was a report earlier this week that the judge who issued a 2006 contempt order got a flyer from the company in the mail with a hand-scrawled note mocking the judge and the fact his order did not deter the chain from doing business.

The College of Opticians called Bergez "ungovernable" and pulled his license earlier this year. (PDF)

Ungovernable?   I find this guy just plain weird.

The sad part is that there are two young children involved.   They might end up wards of the state after all this if their parents do go to prison.   And who pays for their care?   I say it should be their parents, the Bergezes, that is if they have any money left after the government seizes the assets of the company and possibly their personal assets too.

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Iggy meets Betty Windsor, and other sound-offs

So QEII has a sense of humour, says Michael Ignatieff.   Cool.

Now, isn't it about time he got back to the business of offering an effective opposition and an alternative to PMS?

Iggy still strongly supports corporate welfare for the tar sands; says he sticks by Ontario and BC introducing the HST which kicked in yesterday (along with a simultaneous 2 percent hike of the tax in Nova Scotia) although he also wants to "mitigate" the impact on lower income Canadians, and says that while he wants to engage Mainland China on human rights abuses also doesn't want to antagonize Beijing.

I'll go through the list with my responses:

1. With the crap all four of Betty Windsor's kids have put her through, it's impressive she manages to have a sense of humour after all these years.   Then again, several of her Prime Ministers in the UK have managed to piss her off as well (a matter of discrete yet still public record) -- not to mention the opposition leaders there.   Forget the jokers we have in Ottawa, the GG is pissed off with them enough.
2. If he wants the "Green Vote" he has to take a strong stance with Big Oil:    Either the sands have to be shut down and Big Oil forced to replant several trees for every one they cut down to mine a non-renewable natural resource ... or they lose corporate welfare and have to assume one hundred percent of clean-up costs.   He also has to impress on Alberta the need for a more realistic royalty rate for extraction and the need to save up the money for a rainy day and not to fund pork-barrel projects.
3. The HST is a reality, and it can't be undone.   And it won't be, no matter what any politican says, or any petitions, or any "recall" campaigns.  Here in Ontario, we're having to grin and bear it ... at least there's a weak promise to further reduce provincial income taxes if business cost reductions aren't passed on to the consumer, but it's just hot air for now.   And frankly, the anti-HST war in BC has a very unwelcome ally in Bill "Fantastic" Vander Zalm -- whose social conservatism makes PMS look like a socialist.   Vander Zalm has no credibility after Fantasy Gardens, despite his being acquitted (even he admitted he could be accused of "stupidity" -- his word), or his doing PSAs for BC's auto insurance monopoly.   If Iggy wants to keep the combined tax he needs to offer realistic solutions on how to reduce the income tax burden on Canadians (particularly lower and middle income Canadians) while maintaining or increasing revenues.  And he needs to do so well before Harper calls an election so that the latter has no chance to get the upper hand.
4. Beijing has antagonized the West enough.   It hacks into electric grids and shuts down entire cities in the democratic world.   It has an intelligence and corporate spy network that makes the FSB / KGB look like Keystone Kops.   And while Canada certainly does have a lot to answer for on the human rights file, it pales in comparison to Mainland China who are the masters of rights abuses.   If they don't want to comply with internationally accepted norms, then we need to start re-linking trade to progress in reforms.   Iggy needs to draw the line somewhere.   Why not on this?

If Harper had his way, it is possible the Queen would not have been able to meet with any of the opposition leaders here at all.   So it's good that Mr. Ignatieff got his chance to air where he would take this country.   Now it's time for him to tell the rest of us.    Time is running out, and we don't need a majority right-wing government.    Canadians don't want buttered scones, we need the meat and potatoes.

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