When I left on a short holiday, about 10 days ago, this fall’s municipal election in my home own looked rather dull. While the mayoral contest and the regional council races were shaping up to be competitive, the number of candidates running in our wards left several virtually uncontested and even on the verge of proclaimed winners. Within the span of my holiday, though, the picture changed radically. To quote a friend of mine:
“It’ll be democracy, after all!” (more…)
One spring weekend in 1967, I managed to convince several of my friends to accompany me to the family’s property in the country. The weather forecast promised to be sunny and warm. My mom promised some of her renowned Greek cuisine. My dad said he’d allow us a few beers at the end of the work day.
“Work day?” one of my friends, Michael Clancy, wondered.
“Yeah, just a bit of planting,” I said, “about two thousand evergreen trees.”
On a hypothetical day, responding to downtown apathy, the township votes against redeveloping the main street. Or, guessing about a population shift, the public school board makes plans to dismantle one of the town’s elementary schools. And then, wildly projecting buyer trends, several of the big-box stores in town decide to forgo sales for gardeners, truck enthusiasts or on Boxing Day.
In these make-believe scenarios, the municipality, the board and retailers are quite happy to ignore information readily and often freely provided by Statistics Canada in its regular written census. They would agree with the current Industry Minister’s perception that Canadians can do without the long-form census.
“The state has no right to demand intrusive information,” Tony Clement told reporters, and further that “up to 24 per cent of Canadians believe [they] should not be forced to answer it.”