The Conservative war on science

Years ago, 1985 I think, when I lived in Toronto, someone made the mistake of sending me the long form census. I replied only to the how-many-people-live-there question (one) and mailed it back. A few weeks later I got a nagging phone call that, after much amusing back and forth over a month and half, eventually led to two StatsCan people in my apartment and one on the phone from Ottawa and me getting my jacket, ready to go to jail. They went away instead.

Five years later – there was a hiccup in the census’s 10 year schedule in the ‘80s but I don’t remember why – my phone rang one night. It was a faux-nice guy from StatsCan who said, in a talking-to-lunatics voice, that he’d been assigned to deal with “people like you” and would it be okay if he read the long form to me and answered the questions while I chipped in whenever I liked.

“Sure, go ahead.” And he read and answered all the questions without any chipping in from me. When he finished, he said “That’s it.” I said “Well, good night then.” He cracked. “Every goddamn one of you is exactly the same.” And he slammed his phone down. We had slammable phones back then.

He's mad because Harper cut the "long form" of the census, which directly impacts all the Liberal research mills up and down Sparks St. in Ottawa. Most of which are private-yet-tax-funded.

Basically the government pays Liberals to lobby the government for more Liberal policies. Harper threw a wrench in their spokes by giving them less government sourced data to crunch, thereby calling their next policy putch into question. If you don't know how many one-armed, black, muslim, transvestite, gay, Gypsy single mothers there are in Etobicoke then you can't very well complain that they aren't having their particular needs improperly met by the local library, can you?

So after a couple years of really bad performance, the hated Conservatives can cut all the grants these Liberal lampreys get and we shall all be the better for it.

Naturally Mr. Gregg is quite put out that his gravy train got tipped over. Actually -working- for a living is something he's probably never done before.

That is an awesome story Mike. It's my medium term goal to buy a slammable phone.

I should write an app for that. Push the button, send the sound of a slammed phone and hang up.

Mr. Gregg is so confident of his Ottawa viewpoint that the comments are closed on his webpage where the speech is posted.

Why, just yesterday, the House of Commons voted down a proposed scientific research project on a medical issue.

Political science wins 203-97.

He's just pissed that he's going to have to actually go out and do some research instead of relying on my tax dollars to do it for him. And frankly those cuts don't go nearly far enough thank you very much. Any cut to CBC is too small, and yes Mr. Gregg any questions from my government IS an unwanted intrusion in my life. Feel free to ask how many people live in my house and perhaps our ages, then mind your own damn business. The idea that Stats Can has grown into a self perpetuating bureaucracy that funnels information to private enitities is repulsive. My government should not be selling information to anyone, let alone private lobbyists. And what exactly do we need "social" scientists in Parks Dept for?

That second link is particularly interesting. All the best people know that there's a war on science here in the US, too. So the countries that place first and fourth and the list are conducting wars on science, but, say, Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia aren't.

You gotta love these guys like Alan Gregg who dislike the new, non-red, merged conservatives for being the wrong tribe, full of people not as urbane and enlightened as him (*cough cough*), and then try to wrap up their distaste as some sort of highly-reasonable analysis.

It's always the same crap: his ilk, the red Tories and urban liberals, have enlightened and non-ideological views that are entirely based on science and reason, while conservative views are irrational and "based on dogma or ideology" instead of "science and reason."

Stephen Harper is a great PM, and we're lucky to have him. The complaints of Carleton U grads, etc. etc., are just so much noise, a constant chattering sound coming from the GTA, the OPG, Macleans (with a few exceptions), and the CBC building. These sorts of dire warnings that the Conservatives are "anti-science" play well with Gregg's red "center" 'tribe', but it doesn't pass the first sniff test among people who are -- wait for it -- less ideological than these putatively non-ideological and enlightened shills for more government and more bureaucrats.

Great fisking by Rob Huck, btw. Who is this guy?

I once worked as a census taker in a small city. I had only one "people like you". Those cases are handled by other workers further up the chain. Luckily for me the majority of my no-returns were elderly people who either couldn't read very well or were lonely. It's not exactly stressful spending an hour or so helping them fill in forms while eating cookies or other baking.

Gregg and other progressives (LPC, NDP or PCs) have it wrong. It is not a War on Science. It's a War on Statists and/or War on Centralized Government. His main complaint about the federal government is that it is losing power. A voluntary long-form census, ending the Wheat Board and abolishing the gun registry gives back power to citizens. The environmental cutbacks give some power back to the provinces while taking away resources for activist groups. These groups will now have to get their funding from environmental groups instead of relying on the taxpayer dime.

Besides, how many of the cutbacks stem from the usual binge-purge cycle of government? The federal government has gotten quite bloated in the last decade or so. Are the cutbacks in the departments that had the biggest growth in that time span?

I want to thank you Alan for telling me you want to thank me.

Last time I saw a census taker, he refused to give me the form then told me he would fill it in for me. I told him in that case he didn't need my answers and booted him out. Eventually after much pounding on the door and endless phone calls, none of which I answered, they mailed me the form which I filled out and mailed back.

Lance, That's a great idea.

Mr Alan Gregg was allegedly an ally and friend of Mr.Mulroney and the PC party and IMO that tells you everything you need to know about what was wrong with the Mulroney administration.

I work for Environment Canada and have seen first hand what this supposed war on science has done. Nothing. Our department is one of the least affected by the budget cuts. While most departments had a 10% reduction in budget, EC only got a 5% reduction (I'm a little pissed that Parks was gutted with a 30% reduction).

And according to union websites, there have only been 139 affected notices given to scientists and professionals in the department. That includes IT and legal as well. A great number of those 139 will go through normal attrition over the next 3 years.

LAS: slammable phones provide a lot of satisfaction. You don't just end conversations, you slam them dead. I can remember slamming a few phones back in the day.

Summed up very well, nold @ 2:24. Excellent posting, Thank-you SDA.

Why did Parks Canada have 446 (70% of 638%) "scientists and social scientists" in the first place? What exactly was the role of a social scientist in a national park?

Harper and Flaherty are slowly changing the prevailing culture within the government. When I started in 1988 at Transport Canada, nobody asked "is this program/expense really necessary?" they asked "how much money is left in the budget? We have to make sure we spend it all or they'll cut it back next year."

"Social" science is for those not smart enough for math, chemistry, physics and biology. Arts grads (McDonald's employees looking for advancement), and friends/relatives of those already in government.

I still have a slammable phone and I used it to tell Stats Canada that I had no intention of digging up 13 months worth of utility bills to complete one of their optional surveys.

You can slam an iPhone, but you can only do it once. Its like Daffy Duck's gasoline trick.

I retain the hard-wired, plastic style phone for when I want to hang up -harshly-. "One moment Mr. Phonespammer/government employee while I transfer you to my slammable phone".

Al-in-Ottawa..I worked for Transport starting in 1975 and was a little worried when we were privatized in 1996. Best thing EVER. We have technology that the govt would NEVER have thought was worth the trouble. We have benefitted in untold ways under Navcanada. Some may question the fees paid to airlines for navcan fees but they help us provide THE best air navagation service anywhere. No matter what my union may say I can't begin to thank Navcanada enough for how they have made my job easier, more efficient, and safer by miles. I love going to work to see what kind of new toys we are getting or are going to get from the company. But wait...privatization is evil...NO ITS NOT...

Liberals have watched command economies spectacularly implode and capitalists excel for decades yet continue to push socialist policies while claiming conservatives prefer ideology to reason.

I no longer have a slammable phone but I will ask them nicely to just hang on a min." I have to attend to something" then I never return. Well I do after an hour or so to turn my phone off. Works great!

The Phantom nailed it.

It's an incest-style money-go-round that backs of liberal ideology with "science".

I will tell them the number of people residing in my house, their ages, gender and relationship to myself (spouse, child, parent, other). I refuse to answer any other questions on the census.

I had an incident similar to Mike's once. After numerous phone calls, most of which pretended that my main objection was to actually writing something down and the ideal solution was for me to answer verbally and they would write it down, they sent a person to my house. Again, she tried repeatedly to get me to 'simply say the answer and we will write it for you'. I told her repeatedly that that was not the point, the point was that I would not divulge the information they wanted because I did not think they had a right to ask it of me.

When she asked ethnicity, I said Canadian. When she asked for 'genetic ethnic background' I said that was racist and refused to answer. When she asked for income I said none of your business. When she asked for mother tongue I said none of your business. It went on like this for close to an hour. Eventually she left without getting any answers from me, whether she made up the answers herself for left them blank I don't know.

That was about 3 censuses ago, they still get number of people residing in my house, their ages, gender and relationship to myself (spouse, child, parent, other) on the census form and nothing else. They have not called me back about it again.

Gregg has his head up his ass if he thinks no one has ever told StatCan how they feel about this.

If you're all upset about the long form census, there's only one bit of advice I can give.

GET A LIFE Gregg!

Quite clearly Gregg knows absolutely nothing about science. The Canadian census is not science; it's unwelcome statist intervention in our lives and I've refused to fill in my last few census forms. During the last census there was a census taker prowling around my house one night when I got home and she offered "to fill in the form for me". My response was that I had no use for such statist crap and that I lived in the house and that was all the information she was getting from me. That was the end of that matter.

The type of science that matters is being funded. The scientists that word in national parks are superfluous. I'm glad now that I never did go into wildlife biology (thought of it for a while because it would allow me to travel to wilderness areas all over the country but there was the working for the government bit which I didn't like).

In fact, I can't see a single example of a "Conservative attack on science" in the whole of the rant by Gregg. From my point of view as a scientist, I would not call any of the "research" in question to be particularly scientific. Given a choice between spending money on useless census projects or basic neurobiologic research to find a cure for Alzheimer's, the latter choice wins hands down. One doesn't need a census form to observe that there are a lot more old people around and quite a few of them are going to develop Alzheimer's and be quite a burden on the system (until we get those socialized medicine death panels up and running).

While I'm against statist intervention for the most part, in fundamental research one needs state funding (or a very rich patron). The pharmaceutical industry does a great job of incidentally doing basic research but only if it's something they need to do trying to perfect drug X and, if the biologic system isn't relevant to drug X, it doesn't get studied. Also, pharmaceutical industries will hide huge amounts of research that put drug Y in a bad light. Again, just good business practices but not helping scientific progress.

I'm a little pissed that Parks was gutted with a 30% reduction.

Be thankful, it should have been 100%.

I love camping and visiting our nation's great historic sites. We should be putting more money into promoting our national parks and our history, not less.

Social sciences include archaeology and anthropology, human geography, history, teaching, sociology and linguistics. They are all fields that are vitally important in preserving our heritage and making it accessible to Canadians and visitors alike.

This is two weeks old. See Sep. 12 Reader Tips. I for one commented, following a tip from "Ron in Kelowna".

I will repeat what I've said before: The only people who "need" the non-basic census data are social engineers. Screw them; they're not entitled to it. Harper's elimination of the mandatory long form census was a stroke of genius.

In case anyone's interested, here's my take on the long-form census from last year.