Liberals, and some liberals, will take umbrage at any incursion into privacy, grinding teeth and hollering at their loss of privacy -- unless somebody actually does something about it. Then they grumble and complain that the whole government/liberal tax-guzzling complex absolutely needs the minutest detail of your life so big government can 'plan' your life (i.e. spend your money for you).

The hypocrisy, and stupidity, is deafening.

The 40+ page so-called long-form census is a major reduction of Canadians' privacy, and none of the Government's damn business. Worse than this very private info staying in the hands of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, errr... StatsCan, where number-crunchers can crunch away, they sell the data and distribute it broadly in different formats, known as "products". It may be laudable for a government department to try to recover some of its costs, but not when it's trafficking in the personal data of millions of Canadians who have been forced by severe sanction to cough up the goods.

If you've ever been badgered by a StatsCan rodent coming to your door repeatedly until you have provided a filled out long-form census, you know that Orwell's Big Brother is alive and well. It's less than pleasant.

The reaction against increasing the number of people receiving the long-form census, but making it voluntary, is somewhat predictable. You have the vested interests who claim Statscan data is central to their work, and to the survival of Canada, of course. And you have the 4 major opposition parties and their stormtroopers, depleted as they are. Then you have a media fed up with good economic news in the dog days of summer, who have offered no balance in reporting this story.

It's time for all Canadians to stand up for privacy in a world where personal identity and liberty erodes daily.

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