August 2010

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Aug 4 & 5 Media Roundup

August 6, 2010 in Census, infrastructure, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | Permalink

Now it is personal, do the tories hate data lovers?:

“Gordon O’Connor, the Conservative party whip who ensures MPs stay on message, said the census is “not an issue that people are going to live and die on” and that it’s mainly a big issue for the groups that want “free data” and the media who want something to write about during the summer” Montreal Gazette

“We don’t govern on the basis of statistics,” Nicholson said. “We govern on the basis of what we hear from the public and what law enforcement agencies tell us. That has not changed in the four and a half years we’ve been in government.”

Lots of cool videos if you search: Canada Census on youtube!
Action

CBC Question of the Day:

And of course another song! (A la Johnny Cash)

Census Prison

(with sincere apologies to Johnny Cash)

I hear the census taker
He’s coming down the hall
He’s gonna ask me questions
That I won’t like at all

So I’m stuck inside this prison
No-one to post my bail
That damn form was too intrusive
So now I’m stuck in jail

It could have been San Quentin
Or maybe Alcatraz
I landed in the Don Jail
A sittin’ on my ass

Cause I skipped a census question,
Just because I could.
Then the census Mounties caught me
And locked me up for good.

Oh I hate that long form census
I’ll curse it till I die
Please Mr. Harper save me,
I promise I will try

And I’ll do my civic duty
Once every twenty-five years.
I’ll fill out that long form census,
Oh momma, dry your tears!

Tuesday Media Roundup

August 4, 2010 in Uncategorized by Tracey | 1 comment

Video:

Stockwell Day gets tough on imaginary crime, ie. unicorn poaching

CBC news: MP Mark Holland holds a news conference on the Conservative government and its crime agenda

Abolir les statistiques sur la criminalité? : Boisvenu manipule les faits

Audio:

The Mark The Mark Radio ep.25: Four of The Mark’s contributors reflect on what the scrapping of the mandatory long-form census means to Canada and Canadians.

The Wire – Juking the Stats

August 4, 2010 in Census, federal government, government, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | Permalink

What do I say?  Imaginary numbers, the “alarming rate of unreported crimes” to justify building prisons.  I must revert to The Wire for wisdom.  BEWARE the video clips below are loaded with swear words. (not the Canadian video of course – it’s just blasphemous!.

NOTE: StatCan does not juke stats, but the current government sure loves juking.  So they are juking the stats to kill the real stats.  Please lets not become like the US!

Juke, Juked, Juking

realm: American street slang

To intentionally confuse, distort, outmaneuver or misdirect attention away from what is real to favor what is illusory, imagined, or a more desirable outcome. (Newsroom Magazine).

The definition above accompanies a great interview with David Simon the creator of the Wire: Gaming The System, Juking The Stats.  Do watch this great interview series on PBS with Bill Moyers.

The Wire on Juking the Stats:

Juking Stats for curriculum alignment.  Remember this is hard core TV social discourse on power that would make Foucault proud.  This is also drug ridden, underfunded, cops loosing jobs, no child left behind urban Baltimore under Bush.  In Canada violent crimes are going down, violent crimes are reported while spousal abuse reporting is always problematically un-dereported while petty theft (like your bike got stolen) are under reported.  Bike theft and prison construction however, do not co-relate!

Such poignant commentary:

They Manufactured an issue to get paid and we manufactured and issue to get you elected Govenor. Everybody is getting what they need behind some make believe.

On Unpaid (censusless) Work

August 3, 2010 in canada, Census, federal government, government, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | 5 comments

Marilyn Waring contributed to the inspiration for the questions on Unpaid Work that were part of the Long Form Census (1996, 2001 and 2006).  The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has a copy of the film for free viewing: Who’s Counting: Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics.  It is well worth the time to watch and learn about how those questions came about and why they are so important. I saw the film at the Main Public Library a couple of times, usually shown just before Census Day.

I guess women will just have to invent new professions again: educator, household engineer, recreation manager, child coordinator, plant supervisor, home health care provider and so on!  Watch the film for ideas.

These questions were scrapped by the “New” Government and for some odd reason, the National Statistics Council recommended that these questions be removed as part of their compromise offer to the Conservative Government.  It is claimed that this was the series of questions that generated the most inquiries.  Hmm!  What was the nature of the complaints and who made them?  I wonder if the anti childcare, stay at home & back to the kitchen, Tory lovin’ lobby called REAL Women had a posse working the phones!  ( I will inquire!)

As Stockwell Day indicated today (ahum) on the topic of ah, crimes stats, how can we know if things are not counted, but that does not mean we do not build an entire infrastructure of prison, just because we don’t know (ahum ahum). Hey does that mean we get daycare? Social Housing? Income supports and removal of claw backs for sole support parents? etc.  The argument used to be, show us the numbers.  The real numbers are gone, so we just have to communicate with our imaginary friends and make stuff up – alarming rate of un-reported crime – go figure ay. Well, it seems that with this government, the numbers just don’t matter.  Oye veigh!

Marilyn’s Book Counting for nothing: what men value and what women are worth was my first encounter with critical thinking and data.  I was in New Zealand and the friends I was staying with gave me the book as a souvenir!  It might be time to read it again!

The questions on unpaid work first appeared in the 1996 Long Form Census (see Q. 30 on 1996 Long Form Census and Q. 33 on 2001 Long Form Census).  We have 15 years of data and these are R.I.P.’d for 2011.  I guess unpaid work will cease to happen after that!

2006 Census Questions on Unpaid Work:

33. Last week, how many hours did this person spend doing the following activities:

(a) doing unpaid housework, yard work or home maintenance for members of this household, or others? Some examples include: preparing meals, washing the car, doing laundry, cutting the grass, shopping, household planning, etc.

  • None
  • Less than 5 hours
  • 5 to 14 hours
  • 15 to 29 hours
  • 30 to 59 hours
  • 60 hours or more

(b) looking after one or more of this person’s own children, or the children of others, without pay? Some examples include: bathing or playing with young children, driving children to sports activities or helping them with homework, talking with teens about their problems, etc.

  • None
  • Less than 5 hours
  • 5 to 14 hours
  • 15 to 29 hours
  • 30 to 59 hours
  • 60 hours or more

(c) providing unpaid care or assistance to one or more seniors? Some examples include: providing personal care to a senior family member, visiting seniors, talking with them on the telephone, helping them with shopping, banking or with taking medication, etc.

  • None
  • Less than 5 hours
  • 5 to 9 hours
  • 10 to 19 hours
  • 20 hours or more

These were just after education and just before paid work.  There is no long form Census for 2011 (so far anyway), there is this thing called a voluntary survey, and it does not include the questions on unpaid work.

What Men Value and What Women are Worth [Paperback]

New Cartoons

August 3, 2010 in Art, canada, Census, datasets, federal government, government, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | 1 comment

From the Toronto Star

Toronto Sun
by Patrick Corrigan

Theo Moudakis/Toronto Star
By Theo Moudakis


By Michael de Adder

Monday’s Census Media Roundup

August 3, 2010 in canada, Census, federal government, government, infrastructure, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | Permalink

Good King Censusless – Lyrics

August 2, 2010 in canada, Census, federal government, government, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | 1 comment

Graphic By http://www.socialsignal.com/Via: BI Professional

An introduction for my many international followers:

King:  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Page:  Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement
Statistician:  Recently resigned head of Statistics Canada, Munir Sheikh

Special thanks to data quality expert Jim Harris whose Dr. Seuss-style data quality limmericks and songs served as a partial inspiration to this piece.  His blog can be found on my Blogroll (Obsessive Compulsive Data Quality).

Enjoy!

Good King Censusless looked out
On the cottage season.
With the sunshine round about
Warm and crisp and even.
Everyone was drinking beer
Feeling great elation.
How could he disrupt the cheer
breaking cross the nation?

“Mr Clement, come by strife,
If you know so, say it.
How can I make foul the life
Of the summer respite?”
“Sire, a man I once knew long
Loathed the census taking
If you could remove this wrong
You’d be nation-making.”

“Make it so”, he said at once
With no consultation,
“Though I may be thought a dunce
Causing consternation.”
Statistician would not toast
His part in this madness.
He would rather quit his post
Causing him much sadness.

Harper bellowed “What a fool!
Get that man to focus!
He should know that math’s not cool,
Stats are hocus pocus.”
Statistician stood his ground
In the public’s favour.
He said he was honour-bound;
People saw him braver.

“Bring me hatchets, bring me fire,
We shall burn his cabin!
He’s earned my unholy ire!
He won’t know what happened!”
Page and Monarch, off they trode,
Off they trode together
Feeling stormy, yet instead
Of the sunny weather.

Statistician’s cabin burned
To the ground next morning.
Page and Monarch never learned,
Though this be a warning:
Cabin dwellers all be sure
Be you all accounted,
Those who cannot count the poor
Can’t themselves be counted.

Canceled/Cut Government Surveys

August 2, 2010 in Census, federal government, government, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | 6 comments

I received tips about other canceled or cuts to government surveys.  I am checking to see what else might be missing in this list. Looks like there are MORE serious cut-backs to knowledge in Canada.  Also READ the comments to this post, they are loaded with great information.  Armine Yalnizyan adds the following:

” “cut” can mean different things, from discontinued, to throttled in terms of sample size, to lost questions (census/NHS), to just delaying it indefinitely.” (email communication)

NEW INFO IN this Datalibre post (05/08/2010)

The Digital Journal article Cancellation of Youth In Transition Survey Shortsighted includes the following:

  1. Youth In Transition Survey (YITS)
  2. National Longitudinal Survey on Children and Youth (NLSCY)
  3. National Apprenticeship Survey (NAS)
  4. Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)

These were carried out jointly between Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and Statistics Canada.

According to The Tyee and a few others, this one has been cancelled.  However, other information says “CP story about Public Service Employee Survey wrong: Treasury Board. Survey still a go; a proposed annual survey spiked.” (need to verify!):

5. Public Sector Employment Survey (PSES)

While the Globe and Mail; Social Policy in Ontario,  NJN Networks and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities report that the following was scrapped by HRSDC.

6.  Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS)

Armine Yalnizyan, in her open letter to Tony Clement published in the Progressive Economics Forum includes references to the following survey cuts and cancellations.  I also received some email communication about these:

7. Workplace and Employee Survey (WES)

“WES was discontinued in 2009.  It told us about benefits related to working, I think the only annual source of info on healthcare and pension benefits, but could be wrong”. (I will verify this later)

8.Survey of Household Spending

“was designed to inform us of spending patterns of Canadian households. It is about to change its methodology to save costs. Because of these changes we will no longer know what is happening to the savings rates and debt levels of rich, poor and middle class families”. email communication: “SHS is undergoing a methodological change that will see it provide less detailed (i.e. distributional) info.  Aggregate info (average, mean) will still be just as robust but we will know less about how different are rich and poor households’ patterns of saving, dis-saving (going through savings and borrowing) and spending on things like housing, healthcare, energy, education as a % of their incomes.”

9. Survey of Financial Security

“tracks the distribution of assets and debts across income groups, age groups, family types, and regions in Canada, something virtually all advanced industrialized nations do on a regular basis.  It was last undertaken by Statistics Canada in 2005. There are no plans to run it again. It has been deemed an unnecessary survey.” email communication “last run in 2005, assesses net worth (assets minus debt) and what contributes to it, like value of house, value of RRSP,RPP student debt, mortgage debt, etc.  It is an occasional survey but clearly something of interest these days. Last time it was run was because HRSDC financed it because of tight budgets at StatCAn (no $ for occasionals). The sample size was 9,000 instead of the 23,000 the previous time (1999), and while results were robust enough to be published at the national level by decile, it was no longer possible to order data to assess changes for young versus older families with children or immigrant families.  “

It seems like the Survey of Financial Security,according to StatCan is”
is budget or sponsor dependent, the status is occasional and not cancelled.”

A colleague who works with municipal scale data sent the following:

10. Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC).

This may have been a planned conclusion to this survey. But, then, that’s one thing that is so vexing about this situation: The absence of any transparent attempt at “planning” for changes to our survey instruments and methodologies.

One other thing to note about the list of canceled surveys: None of these is relevant to organizations seeking to measure trends or conditions at the scale of either municipalities or neighbourhoods. The closest would be the SHS, which captured some trends for “selected CMAs”. We need MORE information about municipalities and their neighbourhoods, not less!!! (Email communication)

I need to check on this new information which was posted in the Comments of Armine’s open letter:

?Transportation data? “transportation in Canada, many data series have been discontinued over the last couple of decades -these are data on the “supply side” of transportation, which is a sink for quite large infrastructure expenditures which need to be “got right” a priori”

The following need to be validated.  Has anyone heard of these or any others that have been canceled?

?Survey of Financial Security?
?Workplace and Employee Survey (WES)?
?Survey of Household Spending?

Cartoons

August 2, 2010 in Census, federal government, government, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | Permalink

Note: I am missing references for some of these.  If you know of their provenance, could you let me know so that I may fully reference them! Cheers

tracey

Media Roundup July 29-Aug. 1

August 2, 2010 in canada, Census, federal government, government, openmovement, policy, politics by Tracey | Permalink

Graphic By http://www.socialsignal.com/ Remind me to not go away during a censusless time!  Shesh catching is brutal.  But alas, I think I may have captured most of the media clips in the last few days.  There are quite a few, so get some tea and cookies!

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