A Return To None Of Your Business As Usual

Big deal...they have me in tears.

Hmm... Less studies that better facilitate government discrimination against me and mine. How is this a bad thing.

There's lies, damn lies, then statistics.

mike

99% of Canadians who don't work for the federal government don't give a rodent's rectum...

Darned sticky mouse!

Dose this mean that I don't have to pay for three or four gov. workers to look after me?

"oh the humanity!"

LOVE IT

What mike said, and not much difference between them.

A statistics course professor I had in 1970 started his course introduction by saying that the same set of statistical numbers can be used to prove opposing points of view and give supposed evidence toward an agenda. Not like we haven't seen this the last few decades what with all the various wars on this or that.

This was a good move. Now if only Oceans and Fisheries would get cut in the prairies.

Finally some people will start to work to benefit the society:

http://www.careerjet.ca/statistician-jobs.html

Statistics Canada should have one more survery asking, "Do you agree that the Federal Government should fire a bunch of useless, overpaid statisticians working at Statistics Canada?"

And then base their actions upon the results.

"Fiscal restraint is rippling through Canada’s national statistical agency"

Like a baby tossing a pebble into the Muskoka/ Joseph and Rosseau chain before the regatta and antique boat show they gather at every weekend.

As I have said before, the federal government has an insatiable desire for knowledge about us.
To satisfy that desire, they employ professional market research companies. Stats Can is not professional and cannot produce quick answers.

Again, some of these market research companies are serious, and their results are usually kept confidential (one of my relatives owns such a company).
Other "market research" companies produce the opinions that they are paid to produce. Those we hear about.

This is particularly common around election time. The much-publicised opinion polls are not the ones that the parties themselves rely on for planning.

The most obnoxious feature of Stats Can is that they do not really keep census data secret. They operate a program whereby accredited university researchers (typically in medicine and the social sciences) obtain access to current, raw census data, including names and addresses.

Yes, this is done in confidentiality. Yes, steps are taken to keep the information secret. These steps, if they were within a regime of military security, with draconian penalties for breaches, might almost be sufficient. But in fact there may be some young medical or social science researchers running around your town who know lots and lots about you, and no serious penalties for their improper divulging of that information.

Related:

“There is no doubt that the cuts can’t be absorbed without reducing the amount of information Statistics Canada produces,” said Michael Veall, president of the Canadian Economics Association and an economics professor at McMaster University.

Frances Woolley, an economics professor at Carleton University, said she's concerned data collection and processing might be contracted out.

“The great strength of StatCan analysis is that it is non-political and non-partisan - it's analysis that people can trust,” she said.

In the mouth of a university professor, of course, "non-political and non-partisan" usually means "a propaganda outfit for banksters and communists."

John Lewis is right. Rest assured Goldman Sachs et al. have access to top-notch economic and financial data and analysis, light years more informative than anything Statscan ever reports. They pay top dollar for it and the only way the rest of us will ever get to see it is if it's leaked to ZeroHedge.

Here's a thought, boys and girls. Maybe if you had to do your own homework and your own data collection you'd waste less time on useless research on non-problems invented by the Queen's enemies to spread alarm and despondency. You really want to figure out what's wrong with the economies of the civilzed world? Major Douglas beat you to it nearly a hundred years ago. All he had to do was use his eyes. What's your excuse?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/conservative-cuts-put-half-of-statscan-jobs-at-risk/article2418557/

guess they'll soon be joining radio-canada in demanding to be unaccountable to the government or the taxpayer...

Radio-Canada union: Accountability to Parliament code 'offensive'

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2012/05/01/19701916.html

Radio-Canada journalists say they won't help the minister responsible for the state broadcaster be more accountable to Canadian taxpayers.

The union representing the French CBC's communications workers filed a grievance earlier this month, objecting to a new code of conduct that, among other things, asks employees to serve the public interest by "Loyally carrying out the lawful decisions of their leaders and supporting ministers in their accountability to Parliament and Canadians."

This new code of conduct came into force April 2 and replaced the old rules that dated from November 2006.

Union president Alex Levasseur said the requirement to support ministers in their accountability to Parliament is offensive and amounts to an oath of allegiance to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's ministers. Radio-Canada employees should not be subject to political influence, and Levasseur does not think the $1.1 billion in public funding the state broadcaster receives annually creates a special obligation to be accountable to Canadians through Parliament. He added that Radio-Canada had always been at arms' length from the government and that the new code of conduct put that healthy distance in jeopardy.

As I've said before,we could fire 50% of the bureaucrats at all levels of government,and completely de-fund all NGO's,and the average jane/Joe Blow slaving 70/hrs/week would not notice a iota of a difference,except maybe LESS interference in our lives.

"[Statistics Canada] is also grappling with an 'unprecedented' drop in revenue from other government departments that fund surveys..."

Ha.

Only a truly committed bureaucrat could believe that money from other government departments would constitute "revenue".

I'm literally weeping here over the loss of StatsCan jobs.

As a business owner, I've wasted entirely too much time over the last dozen years responding to their stupid surveys that they say are 'required'. When I completed my first survey -- one that took me a half a day to complete -- I asked someone at StatsCan when I'd be able to access the survey results.

They told me I wouldn't have access without paying a fee! Really? You tell me I have to complete a survey that takes hours of my working time away and I don't even get the courtesy of accessing the results?

Suffice to say, any future surveys that I actually took the time to complete never took longer than 30 seconds to fill out the answers.

No big problem. What statistics Stats Canada cannot collect due to short staffing, they will just make up, same as always.

When they release their stats the numbers are four years old, who wants four year old data? Frankly I see no purpose for Stats Canada, other than to employ Whinebecers.

Perhaps to save money they can start by removing a few fields in their census form, such as "What is your race?"

Rest assured, those rock solid Stats Canada reports about the sad state of affairs for working women and our working poor will continue unabated.

Stats Can is a cesspool of Liberal hacks, 6000 strong, stuffed to the rafters with appointees and partisan Liberal bagmen.
Under Liberal rule whenever a Federal department needed justification for increased scope, they would call Stats Can, who would be more than happy to doctor the numbers and provide that justification.

The central planning department needs some culling..
Good ridance.
I know, I know, I shouldn't sugar coat it!

Is this not a totally useless department that can completely eliminated - like the many useless government departments that can be eliminated?

Have you ever gone to Stats Can to get help with research?

Useless people who have not one clues how to do their job ... and expect you to do the worl for them and pay for it.

Fire them all.

Eliminating the mandatory long-form census was a stroke of genius by the PM. The only people who "needed" the information were the social engineers. And nobody needs those parasites.

If the census were to ask you how many bedrooms you have, the social engineers will claim there is a problem with "bedroom inequality" and that we need a government program to end it. That's the kind of mindset they have. Screw them.

Are we beginning to see how the PMHS plan works now? Strategically cutting up the engine of Liberal Party propaganda, firing the key players, starving the rest of the machine of information, slowly closing the tap of life-giving money.

I like it!

Poor Statscan. I thought they farmed everything out to Mumbai. Are those people working in Canada? I used to be impressed with how they could plan the economy with numbers that I made up on the spot or quickly extrapolated. I could pull the numbers out of my A$$ and do a fat transportation questionaire in 15 minutes.