http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon

- your description of what’s happened at Kinsella’s site over the past couple weeks on this is ridiculously overblown: first, not everyone who disagreed w. him was even a Liberal; second, some of the most vociferous respondents were only (sometime) Liberal voters, not party members; third, we weren’t browbeating him or trying to force him into silence or submission: it’s his blog, he posts the topics & decides which comments to post — he _wanted_ the discussions on the issue; fourth, far from being a shameful display, a healthy, fact-filled debate is a sign of a democratic and responsive party, unlike the reign of stifling gag orders & fear that characterizes the Harper Cons; & fifth, even so, there are dissenting voices in the Con. tent, too, incl. one of _their_ former strategists, Keith Beardsley ( http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/author/kbeardsleynp/ ) and a sitting MP (James Rajotte: http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/07/19/14759766.html

- But for a genuinely shameful example of politics and a damning example of Conservative party values, just look at Clement’s testimony to the Parliamentary Committee: where he not only led everyone to believe that the earlier reports were right, that most of the additional $30-M would be spent on advertising & follow-up on getting more responses to the _long_ form to enhance its reliability (whereas it turns out that the additional $25-M will just be to try to convince people to answer the _short_ form now that the Cons & the Sun have undermined StatCan in general & the Census in particular so badly)

but he also told a manifest untruth when he claimed that it was the Trudeau gov’t that introduced the intrusive long form in ’71, & that before that there was only the short form.

In fact, it’s the opposite: they introduced the short form! Before ’71, it was just the long and the _longer_ forms people had to do. A hundred years earlier (1871), there were 211 q’s in the census! And as many as 561 in 1901 (if you got stuck answering all 9 types of q’res).

http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/ref/about-apropos/hist-eng.cfm

Gradually, some of the extra sets of q’s were split off into sep. q’s like a farming one (which still exists), and a fishing one, & a housing one. But the core population one, which everyone had to do, had b/w 30 and 40 q’s. Like this 1961 one: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/cdn/ccri/CCRI/Images/1961%20Schedule.pdf And that year, 20% of households also had to do a long one on internal migration, fertility and income. http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/ref/rp-guides/rp/sw-ep/sw-ep_p03-eng.cfm

And besides introducing the short(er)* form in ’71, the Trudeau gov’t actually made the Census a whole lot _less_ intrusive that year by letting people fill out the forms & send them in on their own rather than having to tell them all to an enumerator.

* note, even the shorter form in ’71 still had a whole bunch of housing q’s: here’s the q’re: http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/cdn/ccri/CCRI/Images/1971%20Schedule.pdf

So the Cons not only hate & play fast & loose with contemporary data, but with history, as well.

@ridenrain, beating that dead horse until it’s flat right Ridofbrain?

Do you think you can find a new comment or is that too hard for you?

Oh come on ridofbrain, surely you can do better than merely ape the CPoC talking points. You’ve not been able to expand on what the Conservatives emailed to you.

Once again you lack proof ridofbrain, meaning this is just hot air. Just because some conbot troll agrees with you doesn’t mean your right. It just means that they received the same Conbot email with the same lame talking points.

If you really have an opinion, or a brain, why dont you find it and come up with something original to say Ridofbrain.

@ridenrain, you might say that ridofbrain, but you lack credibility as you regularily spout out talking points and never back up your argument.

So what makes your hot air more than just hot air. Oh wait… nothing.

More ridofbrain tripe.

JOHN..ALL YOUR POSTS ARE HOT AIR.

Once again you lack proof ridofbrain, meaning this is just hot air. Just because some conbot troll agrees with you doesn’t mean your right. It just means that they received the same Conbot email with the same lame talking points.

If you really have an opinion, or a brain, why dont you find it and come up with something original to say Ridofbrain.

More crap from ridofbrain. Credibility just ain’t your thing.

So what makes your hot air more than just hot air. Oh wait… nothing.

More ridofbrain tripe.

I’d say you’re the ones riding the dead horse.