Western Standard

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Friday, July 16, 2010

WS on the census: threatening the innocent

The Western Standard has been posting articles discussing the scrapping of the long-form census. Here is the original post by Peter Jaworski and other articles by: Martin Masse, Terrance Watson, J.J McCullough, and Walter Block.

This is my own personal take on the census reform:

I worked as an enumerator for the 2006 Census. Basically this meant that I was given a list by Statistics Canada of people in my assigned area who had not filled out the census form. I then went home to home demanding that they fill it out, and I was paid a commission for every form that was filled.

A key part of my training was how to get people to fill in the census. I was told to first ask politely, then insist strongly, and finally inform the resident that they could be facing legal action. That’s right, I was told by the government to threaten innocent people in their own home; their only crime was not filling out a government form. The true sin of the census is not the intrusiveness but the unwarranted threat of force against the citizenry.

Getting rid of the mandatory long form is at least a step towards removing this threat and leaving private individuals in peace.

Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on July 16, 2010 in Census | Permalink

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