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The following article by George Jonas appeared in the Calgary Herald 17 May 2001

Big Brother keeping a close watch

Your census answers may not be as secret as you think

George Jonas
For the Calgary Herald
Toronto

It’s ironic that Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski should defend the prime minister against “informational rape” in the month of May. May is the month in 2001 when Statistics Canada chose to engage in the informational rape of all Canadians.

Radwanski used the expression last week about a request by Information Commissioner John Reid to have access to jean Chretien’s agenda books between Jan. 1, 1994, and June 25, 1999. According to Radwanski, letting Canadians – or rather letting Commissioner Reid, a fellow government watchdog – see the PM’s agenda would be “informational rape,” akin to having TV cameras aimed at the PM for 24 hours a day.

A slight exaggeration perhaps. But while Chretien’s privacy commissioner employs overheated rhetoric to protect politicians’ diaries, Statistics Canada’s Census Bureau merrily rode roughshod this week over the genuine privacy of all Canadians.

In the PM’s case, Commissioner Reid needed to adjudicate a request under the Access To Information Act, so he’s trying to subpoena the PM’s agenda books pursuant to a recent Federal Court of Appeal ruling. Reid doesn’t propose to release the information at this point, only to evaluate it, then recommend whether or not any of it might be released under the act.

The Access To Information Act protects many things from being publicly released, from personal data to commercial secrets. The PMO and other government offices know this; what they urge is that the information should also be protected from the Information Commissioner.

The public has no such choice. Nothing protects citizens from the Statistics Act (R.S.C. 1985, c S-19), and the Statistics Act protects nothing from the census bureaucracy. Statistics Canada feels entitled to know everything from the state of our health to the details of our education, sexual preferences, marital arrangements, ethnic background, income and its sources.

Statistics Canada always promises to keep this information confidential – not from itself, of course, but from other government departments or private individuals.

This promise, not to put too fine a a point on it, is a stretch. Confidentiality promises have proven to be slippery at best.

By now, hardly a year passes without some “protected” information finding its way to the files of another government agency, or some centralized government data bank, or a garbage dump.

At Times, confidential information c rops up in court records or even newspaper columns.

To begin with, the confidentiality undertaking is riddled with official exceptions, ranging from specific court orders (rare but possible) to letting Statistics Canada officials select individuals or households for different statistical surveys.

Next, it’s riddled with unofficial breaches. The latter range from slipshod management (such as recurring examples of data being found in refuse bins) to inquisitive, indiscreet, overzealous bureaucrats who reveal information to other government agencies or individuals

The government could, in future, collect the necessary information for legitimate statistical purposes without danger to people’s privacy.

One obvious way would be to make all responses anonymous.

Another method would be to extrapolate overall figures from smaller samples of polled volunteers.

This is a statistical approach, reliably employed in many fields from science to politics. Statistics Canada itself uses extrapolation by not requiring everyone to fill out long form questionnaires.

Other methods or combinations are also available.

Such approaches could easily ensure confidentiality, but officials reject them.

When safeguards of confidentiality are dismissed out of hand by government bureaucracies, on may assume the reason is the stat’s desire for total control.

Big Brother in his arrogance intends to deny any vestiges of privacy and dignity to ordinary citizens. By now the census has evolved from ordinary stock-taking on the part of the community to a tool of government intrusion.

When the state reaches this point, people have only one recourse.

When authorities wont listen, they usually end up being circumvented.

Since you, as a citizen, can no longer trust officials – and unlike the prime minister, you have no watchdog like Radwanski to cry “informational rape” on your behalf – your only remaining choice is to refuse to tell the authorities whatever you don’t want them to know.

If you have enough time, and money for a possible court battle when the next count of Canadians rolls around, you could boycott the census.

If you don’t, you can respond to the questions with a bit of creative fiction.

This way at least, should your census form end up in some garbage dump, you’ll have the consolation of knowing that it contained garbage all along.

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