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Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

It'd be nice if we gave StatsCan, our National Boffins, the ability to make mathematically justifiable claims about the nature of Canada. Unfortunately, the current government decided that voluntary surveys were a perfectly sufficient form of data collection for our national bean counters, and has proudly proclaimed their disinterest in the use of stats to form policy. Don't worry though, the guy who came up with the previous idiocy has a Masters' in Econ. Joy.

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Sarcasm notwithstanding, can you explain how the long form survey would have helped here? Adding to this, the short form survey is still mandatory where "mathematically justifiable claims about the nature of Canada" can still be made particularly with respect to demographics. Furthermore, compared to the census requirements elsewhere, the long form was unnecessarily intrusive (which included mandatory questions like how many rooms in your home have "missing or loose floor tiles.")

The decision to cancel the mandatory long form survey and make it voluntary was made June 17, 2010. The issue raised by Diewert suggests "that Statistics Canada has badly underestimated the growth of so-called multifactor productivity as far back as the 1960s."

I'm not suggesting that cancelling the mandatory long form survey caused these alleged issues. I'm asserting that the way to fix them is not to further erode the ability of the government to collect and analyze data, as is happening under the current government. Further, I'd have more confidence in the ability of government to address these issues if this government hadn't made it very clear that it views statisticians and fact checkers as the enemy.

It's only related insofar as both problems stem from the Harper governments general disinterest in, and declination to fund, accurate data collection and analysis.

Are you saying Statistics Canada's alleged underestimation of productivity since the 1960s stems from the Harper government's policies?

Apparently I did. How silly of me.

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