Stephen Harper - tilting at windmills

No stats supporting a rise in crime? It's invisible crime! Steve will slay invisible crime for us. Ha!

No stats supporting a rise in anti-Semitism in Canada?  Never mind. Steve set up a special parliamentary committee to slay the invisible rise of anti-Semitism in Canada and give it a whole new definition that might include you.

No stats supporting public outcry against long form census? No problemo. It was an invisible public outcry. Long form census slayed, and bonus! -  cripple StatsCan's budget.

No stats supporting examples of voter fraud? Must be invisible voter fraud then, the kind only Steve and his minions can see. Best cripple Elections Canada investigations just to be on the safe side.

Are you starting to see a pattern here? Tilting at windmills and slaying invisible monsters seems to provide excellent cover for attacking whoever Steve as Donkey Otay perceives as opponents.

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Lockheed Martin : "We never forget who we're working for"

That famous LM motto ... which in the main of course refers to their $47.2 billion client, the US government. 

Not just an arms manufacturer anymore, LM builds spy satellites for the NSA, plus surveillance and information processing for the CIA, the FBI, the IRS, the NSA, the Pentagon, the Postal Service, and the US Census Bureau.

Lockheed Martin - counting some people, blowing other people up.

Rather infamously up here in Canada, Lockheed Martin developed and supplied the data-analyzing software to Statistics Canada that scanned the 2006 census forms using “optic recognition” software and helped rework the program for the 2011 count - sparking fears that famous motto meant census info about Canadians would be funnelled to their biggest client via the Patriot Act.

Today, 89-year-old WW2 war veteran and peace activist Audrey Tobias is in court for refusing to fill in her 2006 and 2011 census. If convicted, Tobias will refuse to accept a fine or community service on the grounds that either would be an admission of guilt. It's jail for her or nothing. 
Her refusal is based on her dislike of LM and their cluster bombs :

“Giving it to a foreign military company sends a message to the Canadian people from our prime minister and cabinet that he supports military solutions. I didn’t like that,” she said.

She doesn't care about the possible invasion of her privacy by the NSA via Lockheed Martin but her lawyer will. 


Lockheed Martin press release, April 2013 :

"Lockheed Martin is a leading provider of cyber security technology and services to the NSA and a number of defense and intelligence agencies."

From 2008 : 

"American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians, says an influential analyst on Canada-U.S. relations."Not only about routine individuals, but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge," Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute told a security intelligence conference."

Back in 2006, President of Lockheed Martin’s Americas Region and former Pentagon advisor to Dick Cheney, Ron Covais, was succinct on the subject of integrating corporations like his into the US and Canadian governments :

"We've decided not to recommend any things that would require legislative changes," says Covais. "Because we won't get anywhere."

A LM presser on its relationship to Canada refers to "the development of a North American defense industrial base" :

"Beyond our defence partnerships, Lockheed Martin Corporation stands ready to continue and grow our support to Canada's Census, health care management, information technology, as well as infrastructure and border security to ensure the safe, secure and efficient transit of people, goods and services between Canada and the US."

Health care management? Yeah, they do that too. 

And didn't you guys just get hacked by China a couple of years ago?

In 2010, Tony Clement announced he would "introduce legislation this fall to remove threats of jail time for persons refusing to fill out the census and all mandatory surveys administered by the federal government." But then he didn't.

Fun juxtaposition  : The witness for the Crown against Tobias -Yves Beland, operations director at Statistics Canada - says he has never heard of Edward Snowden and testified that all Canadian census data is completely safe from Lockheed Martin.

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Wed. Oct 9 Update : Tobias acquitted!

"The judge also described the Justice Department's decision to prosecute Tobias, a Second World War veteran, as a "PR disaster."

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Canada Census - The dilemma

Do we fill it in nicely to show our solidarity with StatsCan and their important data-gathering, currently under siege by the Cons, or do we fill it in using really big crayons and attached pictures of cluster bomb victims to protest its having been farmed out once again to war profiteer and surveillance/espionage experts Lockheed Martin?


Back during the 2006 census, some of us worried that Homeland Security would wind up with access to our census data via the US Patriot Act. StatsCan was at great pains to alleviate those fears : LM would not get the actual data because LM were only supplying the software; the actual data would remain with StatsCan.

Lockheed Martin : "We never forget who we're working for".

Well of course not. $35.7B in US government contracts alone out of $42.7B worldwide in 2008 is a whole lot of not forgetting.

ML accounts for one of every 14 dollars doled out by the Pentagon, amounting to a "Lockheed Martin tax" of $260 per taxpaying household in the United States.

Besides there's the US government network to maintain : $12 million on congressional lobbying and campaign contributions in 2009.
NYTimes, secondary source :

"Men who have worked, lobbied and lawyered for Lockheed hold the posts of secretary of the Navy, secretary of transportation, director of the national nuclear weapons complex, and director of the national spy satellite agency.

Lockheed Martin is now positioned to profit from every level of the war on terror from targeting to intervention, and from occupation to interrogation."

Including spying on Quakers and anti-war activists and recruiting interrogators for Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan for the Department of Defense.

Of Lockheed Martin's 57 Federal Contractor Misconduct violations listed at the Project on Government Oversight, nearly a third involve court dispositions and fines for "Government Contract Fraud".
Say, how are our F-35s coming along?

Four months after the 2006 census, Lockheed Martin President of the Americas and Co-Chair of the SPP's North American Competitiveness Council Ron Covais explained to Luiza Ch. Savage how the Security and Prosperity Partnership would be implemented - in incremental changes by each country's executive, bureaucrats and other regulators outside government.

"We've decided not to recommend any things that would require legislative changes because we won't get anywhere."

It may not be entirely rational to fuck with the census form on the grounds that LM profits by it, but sometimes protests are not particularly rational - they are just one of the only means available to us to register our disgust with the creeping militarization inherent in our incremental deep integration with the US.
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My apology to commenters - all comments were lost in Blogger's big fubar today.
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Apparently we the public are annoying to Steve now

“They don’t bother us. It’s just that they are annoying,”
a "senior Conservative official" told the G&M's Dear Jane this morning about the public's uproar in reaction to the Cons' scrapping of the compulsory long-form census.
"Census freedom," this same anonymous Conbot amusingly called it.

Apparently we the public are "annoying" to Steve now.

And not just the Lib/NDP/Green/I-don't-fucking-vote-for-any-of-those-bastards public either.
Not even Con voters support Steve's "Après moi, le déluge" style of government.

According to Angus Reid, only 31% of people who voted Con last time "side with the government's argument that the long form census is intrusive", while 53% of previous Con voters "believe that the long form census yields data that is important to make policy decisions in all areas of public service, and should remain mandatory."

Jane's column header today is Clement digs in heels and gains a supporter on census
The "supporter" turns out to be a rightwing radiohead.
Ok ... that's one.
I dunno, Jane, I don't think you're helping here.
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Over the weekend Feschuk took the piss out of Jane's many columns consisting almost entirely of quotes from anonymous "seniory super-inside long-time party whatever" Con sources. Lols.
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For a decent column on the census containing actual, you know, facts : the incomparable Zerb.
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Head of Statscan quits over census

Munir Sheikh, head of Statistics Canada today:

"I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion. This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census.
It can not.
Under the circumstances, I have tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister."

Cue ShamWow Tony from last Friday :
StatsCan recommended move to voluntary census, Tony Clement says

“So I went to StatsCan. They’re the experts. I said to Stats Canada, ‘Give us some options. Is there a way that we can have a balance, get the data that everyone hankers for . .
"He said he asked whether the voluntary survey would produce “robust” data.
Stats Canada replied “in no uncertain terms, ‘Yes, it would give us the data that everybody hankers for.’ ”

Tony Clement is using the word "everybody" to mean the word "Steve" here. "Hankers" is a Canadian heavy metal band.

But Sheikh's resignation must have come as a big shock to Tony, given that he got around 10 supportive tweets from his 3500 followers about gutting the census (h/t Aaron Wherry) in this G&M interview yesterday.

In the same interview Tony said Sheikh would be making a statement today "to assure Canadians that Statscan is going to do its job".

And Mr. Sheikh did indeed come through for us today. Hats off to you, sir.

Reuters :

"Some Statistics Canada employees have complained to the media that the Conservatives have cut or curtailed several major surveys since the party took power in 2006 in an effort to reduce the amount of analysis the agency does."

... because pesky facts and science and analysis get in the way of the Cons making shit up.
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Thursday update : Munir Sheikh's letter of resignation taken down from StatsCan website.
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The Census : Jedi Knights in your bedroom

Via Kady, an anti-census Sunday missive from Dmitri Soudas, Steve's ninny Director of Communications :

"21,000 Canadians registered Jedi knight as a religion in the 2001 census"

Fun facts : The Australia 2001 census boasted over 70,000 Jedi devotees while New Zealand had 53,715, making it the second largest religion in New Zealand, along with The Church of Elvis and Rugby, Racing and Beer.

In England and Wales, the Office of National Statistics announced their census totals in a press release entitled "390,000 Jedis there are", going on to suggest that the opportunity to give the hoax answer possibly boosted response from the usually laggardly teens and twenty somethings.
I think anyone who is not Dimitri Soudas appreciates that the Jedi answer was given by the same proportion of the population that normally writes "atheist" or "none" in the census box on religion. Of course, we would need an unbroken lineage of long-form census results to know that.

Soudas goes on to use the Canadian Jedi stat, information he presumably guiltily gleaned from the census, to battle the mighty census-supporting IggySiths :

"Canadians don't want the government at their doorstep at 10 o'clock at night while they may be doing something in their bedroom, like reading, because government wants to know how many bedrooms they have."

Take it away, Christopher Walken.

And finally, a week after the Cons stonewalled the SECU committee's call for a G20 inquiry into the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, they are now calling for immediate emergency committee hearings to "examine the urgent public issue created by the Ignatieff Liberals' threat to prosecute and jail law-abiding Canadians who do not wish to participate" in the long census.

Urgent public issue?
The Canada Long Census of 1871, which "asked 211 questions on area, land holdings, vital statistics, religion, education, administration, the military, justice, agriculture, commerce, industry and finance", is now pared down to 59 questions used in the present long-form ever since 1971, but hey, an emergency is an emergency when you're a Con fighting off Jedi Knights in your bedroom at 10 o'clock at night.
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While you were sleeping ... the G&M census poll

When I went to bed last night, the G&M poll on the census looked pretty much the way it had all day - 70% to 30% - with over 11,000 people voting NO :




And this is how it looks this morning :



So some time in the middle of the night, over 8,000 people suddenly got up and voted YES ? Really, G&M?
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As The Pundit's Guide says in comments below : "Also, pretty much proving the invalidity of voluntary surveys, n'est-ce pas?"
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Globe&Mail poll on the census

Updated poll

Globe & Mail online poll on the long-form census.

Participation in the above poll is of course voluntary, rather like democracy. If you or your government don't have accurate information or the means to obtain it, it doesn't work properly.

Personally I would have preferred a poll that asks :
"Are you in favor of StatsCan having the same info you freely offer up to Facebook and your insurance agent?"
or
"Do you think the long-form census should be scrapped in favour of an increase in the number of government ten percenters sent to each household?"
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Update : And while we're at it, how come Warren Kinsella got "an exemption" from filling in the long-form census while Sandra Finley got charged under federal law with non-compliance?
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