Cons, Liberals almost even: poll

At the start of the summer, the Conservatives had an 11 point lead over the Liberals. Not anymore, according to a new EKOS poll:

The poll gives the Conservatives 29.4 per cent support of Canadians, a drop of three points from two weeks ago. The Liberals are at 29.1 per cent support, an increase of nearly two points from the previous poll.

New Democrats are at 15.7 per cent national support, the Green Party is polling at 13 per cent and the Bloc is at 10.9 per cent. The poll of 3,559 Canadians was conducted between Aug. 18 and Aug. 31; it has a margin of error of 1.64 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Source. They offer a suggestion as to why, as well:

The pollster gives only a small measure of credit to the Liberal Leader for the change in fortunes. “The [Michael Ignatieff] travelling redemption show has brought back MI and the LPC from life support to fully fledged contenders for next government,” Mr. Graves said. “In fairness the new parity is as much a product of Tory largesse to their competitors as adroit action on part of the Liberals.”

The Tory largesse to which Mr. Graves refers is, of course, the census. For weeks now it has dogged the Conservatives, gradually picking away at the party’s support, even with its own supporters.

“This seemingly obscure action has set in motion a chain of responses, which has managed to awaken the erstwhile dormant knowledge and professional classes,” the pollster said. “Virtually all of the shift in the political landscape has occurred with the movement of the highly educated.”

So it sounds like it could be another case of the right saving us from itself. Interesting...

How much damage will be done by gutting the census?

Stephen Gordon at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative thinks a great deal:

Before the decision went public, Statistics Canada estimated that the response rates for the long form would fall from about 95% to 50%, but it could be brought back up to 70% if they spent a lot of money pestering non-respondents. This result was of course deemed to be unacceptably low a few months ago, but even this level of failure seems like an unattainable dream now. Now that the census has been made a playground for partisan politics, many CPC partisans will decide that their party's cause will be best served by not filling out the voluntary forms, and many opposition supporters will boycott the long form in protest. The long form data will be a dog's breakfast.

And there will no doubt be many people who will have missed the distinction between the short and long forms and will wrongly assume that they can pitch their short forms into the recycling bin without consequence. After making such a big deal about not forcing people to fill out the census form, the government will be hard-pressed to justify using the powers of the State to force citizens to fill out the short form. There's a real risk that the short form data won't be usable, either.

These are problems that will explode in the government's face over the next few months. But it won't end there. As the months and years wear on, every single census release will be accompanied with a lengthy discussion of to what extent changes since 2006 reflect reality or the failed 2011 census. This is going to go on for years; a cursory search kicks up at least 11 discussion papers based on the 2006 census published by Statistics Canada in the past 12 months. (See here for a summary of output from the 2006 census.) And that's just Statistics Canada. It doesn't include studies done at other federal departments such as Finance or HRDC, or by other agencies at other levels of government.

Of course, non-government researchers will have to devote any number of person-years dealing with the wonky 2011 numbers. Many future studies will no doubt be obliged to use a binary indicator variable to capture the 2011 outlier; this indicator will be known as the Clement Dummy. There will be snarky variations on this notation during seminars.

And to make matters worse, Gordon points out that even if the 2016 census is conducted properly, this will seriously mess up a lot of longitudinal studies. It will be much harder to determine empirically if government programs are working properly, which of course is what the Cons probably want. After all, if they want to cancel a program for ideological reasons, it will be a lot easier to justify if there's insufficient information to determine how well it works than if there's a whole bunch of data showing that it works well.

Clement enters denial mode

Remember a couple of days back when it was reported that Tony Clement claimed to have opposed the changes to the census? Well, now he's denying he ever said that:

I did not say the words Mr. Siddiqui attributes to me. I support the decision and participated in this decision from the get-go. To assert otherwise is incorrect.

What to make of this? Hard to say; it could be that Siddiqui's article was somehow mistaken, though you'd wonder how a journalist with one of Canada's most respected dailies could make such an error. Or, it could be that Harper has ordered Clement to take back what he said about the census. Hard to say what's really going on here...

A spectacular development in the census drama

Tony Clement has just said something remarkable:

“That’s what the boss wanted,” Clement is telling friends about the Prime Minister killing the compulsory long census form, which a fifth of households get once every five years. The minister in charge of Statistics Canada says he opposed the change, to no avail.

From the Star; my emphasis. That sure sounds like a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of cabinet solidarity. I guess Clement would say he's still willing to accept responsibility for the decision, even if he doesn't like it; nevertheless, this is a really weird thing for a cabinet minister in a Westminster-type system to say. It also may put Harper in an awkward position. If he doesn't fire Clement he looks weak, but he needs him -- he's one of relatively few Conservative MPs who have any brains. Interesting times...

ETA: Tony's now denying that he ever opposed the change.

Has Harper passed the point of no return?

I'd have been the last one to predict that the census would be the issue that destroys Harper's career as Prime Minister. But it's become a contender for the role. Look at what Jeffery Simpson has to say about the issue:

It’s been a fine summer for Canadian democracy.

No, not parliamentary democracy, since Parliament was not in session and the who’s up/who’s down of parliamentary punditry/polling is of even less relevance and interest in summer than the rest of the year. No, it’s been a fine summer because civic society overwhelmingly rose up against the assault on reason and the ephemeral triumph of ideology over fact reflected in the Harper government’s destruction of Statistics Canada’s long-form census.

The Harper government – that is, the Prime Minister and his entourage – tried to slip a fast one past Canadians. It announced the end of the long form in the dead of summer, on a Friday to boot, as a sop to their far-right core constituency.

They must have figured no one would be paying attention, so they could take out their dislike of Statistics Canada when no one was looking – a dislike grounded in their blinkered belief that the agency collects facts that are then used by pressure groups, often of the social activist variety, that want more and bigger government.

Canadian civic society immediately smelled a rat. At last count – the figures are provided by the redoubtable retired professor William Stanbury – more than 200 groups and institutions publicly oppose the Harper policy, while three support it.

The three are fringe, right-wing institutions: the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the National Citizens Coalition, the little organization for which Stephen Harper himself once toiled in a Calgary office of two people (himself and a secretary). There’ve been a few supportive, far-right media shills, of course. But that’s been it.

Notably absent from that list, as noted in a previous post, are organizations like the C.D. Howe Institute (hardly a paragon of radical leftist thought, and a pretty significant opinion maker). And what about the fundamentalist churches? The new immigrants that Harper is so keen to court? Recovering from this might not be so easy. And that isn't even considering the other issues the Cons face. The polls are already turning against them, despite the fact that it's summer and people aren't as quick to follow politics right now:

Neck and neck. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and Michael Ignateiff’s Liberals are in a virtual dead heat in a new national opinion poll, confirming the narrowing lead and substantive drop of the Tories first revealed last week.

This is now provoking a debate between pollsters as to the timing of the next election. One says it’s not going to happen; the other says it could be coming soon.

First, the latest poll by Ipsos Reid for Postmedia News and Global Television has the Conservatives with 34 per cent support compared to 31 per cent for the Liberals – within the margin of error. The NDP are polling at 15 per cent; the Green Party and the Bloc Quebecois are both at 9 per cent.

Last week, EKOS pollster Frank Graves found the Tories had dropped 10 points in less than a month, narrowing the gap between themselves and the opposition Liberals – 29.7 per cent for the Tories compared to 28.5 per cent for the Grits.

While Mr. Graves suggested the controversy over the government’s decision to scrap the compulsory long-form census was the reason for the Tory slide, Ipsos pollster John Wright sees it differently.

He attributes the narrowing of the gap to the brouhaha over the G20 summit in Toronto. His numbers show that in Ontario, the Liberals and Conservatives are in a statistical tie – 35 per cent and 36 per cent respectively. The Liberals have also gained ground nationally, suggesting Mr. Ignatieff’s bus tour is helping.

From here. And that's not even mentioning the war:

Most Canadians don’t believe there will be victory in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to a new online survey.

The Angus Reid Public Opinion poll also shows that a majority of Canadians – 53 per cent – do not support the war and 43 per cent believe that Canada made a mistake sending in troops.

While the finding bolsters Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s resolve to end the mission in July 2011, there is still uncertainty as to Canada’s future role. The Owen Sound Sun Times reports that Defence Minister Peter MacKay is “strongly suggesting” his government is open to extending the mission beyond the date passed by the House of Commons.

Mr. MacKay is quoted as saying that it’s “all very interesting” that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and his foreign affairs critic Bob Rae have both made “comments recently about training and extending the mission.” However, later in the article, Mr. MacKay says his government will respect the parliamentary motion.

Yeah, I'd say the Cons are in deep trouble. Regardless of when the next election happens, it's unlikely to go well for them.

Fraser Institute goes a bit off message on the census

The Fraser Institute has been one of the few major institutions to express actual approval of the Cons' plan to gut the census. Even right-leaning organizations like the C.D. Howe Institute and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business think it's a mistake. Alright, maybe they think the sun shines out Stephen Harper's arsehole or something. But then we find this (h/t Paul Wells and Kady O'Malley):

Toronto, Canada's longtime economic engine, may be stalling. According to recent census data, management positions within the city are declining and median income lags the national average. Is Toronto losing its status as Canada's business centre?

My bold. As O'Malley points out, the data they're using comes from the long form census. Not the best optics...

Canadians support long-form census -- poll

Take that, Steve:

In fact, according to the poll (margin of error 3.1 points), 52 per cent of Canadians think the government should reverse its decision and keep the mandatory long form census. Only 27 per cent support the decision to replace it with a voluntary form (24 per cent of Canadians think the long form is overly intrusive).

Nearly three in five Canadians think the long form yields data that is important in the formulation of public policy (53 per cent of Conservative supporters).

From the Globe. Will this be enough to turn things around? Hard to say. The Jurist at Accidental Deliberations seems to think the Cons were in retreat already, while pogge seems to think they've gone too far to back down without losing face. We'll have to see.

The long-form census issue

Another piece of news that's been going around of late is the Cons' plan to scrap the long-form census that is mailed to many households, in favour of a voluntary one. Of course, this will lead to skewed data, since certain groups of people are less likely to fill out the forms than others. This, in turn, will handicap Statistics Canada's efforts to give an accurate picture of the Canadian populace. What does this matter you might ask? Well, Elections Canada and its provincial counterparts use this data to determine appropriate constituency boundaries, so as to ensure fairness in elections. Researchers use it to determine how well social programs are working (but hey, the Cons don't want real data on that anyway).

But what about privacy? Well, StatsCan's data is pretty well secured, and, more tellingly, the privacy commissioner was not consulted on this issue. Of course, if she had been it would have seriously weakened the case for scrapping the mandatory long-form:

The Harper government is blaming privacy fears for a controversial decision to scrap a mandatory long-form census questionnaire – but the country’s privacy watchdog has heard almost nothing from Canadians on the topic.

In fact, according to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, only three complaints were laid about any aspect of the census in the last decade: two in 2006 and one in 2001.

“The number of complaints coming to us about the census has dropped in recent years,” Privacy Commissioner spokeswoman Anne-Marie Hayden said.

The last time Canadians registered beefs on the census that were measured in the double digits was in 1996 – 14 years ago. And back then, the Privacy Commissioner’s office only received 16 complaints. In 1991, the watchdog heard 33 complaints.

Wow. A whole two complaints about the 2006 census. Doesn't seem like much cause for abolishing it, does it? But surely this will at least save taxpayers' money, right? Oh, wait.

For those who are interested in a bit of slacktivism, there's a Facebook group and an online petition to keep the long form in place. I've signed (just like I signed a petition against the Canada-US Free Trade agreement in 1988...) and I suggest you do too.