In the early 1690′s in the colony of Massachusetts in what would become the United States of America a witch hunt broke out. Led by the Puritans, a movement within the Church of England who were both extremely religious, in their own right, and rather political, they sought to track down and bring to trial anyone who they thought might be a witch. The indications that witchcraft were taking place in the colony were obvious: families would often find their crops or livestock devastated by bad weather, blight, or even earthquakes. The only explanation for such devastation was evil magic. The indications that one was a witch were pretty obvious as well: any woman who was single or recently widowed.

The truth behind the Salem Witch Hunt is that there were a number of pretty simple social and economic factors at work behind the scenes.

Socially, the Puritan community was very tight-knit and very religious. The rules by which they lived their lives and operated their societies were strict and unforgiving. What’s more, these were politically-minded people; people who had chosen to leave England and make a new way for themselves in the colonies—opposing opinions abounded. And these were hard economic times. Growing families were encroaching on one another’s farm lands, crops and livestock (due to completely natural reasons) were susceptible to the weather and to disease, and it was increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Mass panic over the possible presence of witchcraft in the colony would find fertile ground to grow in and when it began to spread it probably felt natural and right. Witchcraft, the thing that the Puritans feared the most, explained everything that was going wrong; it was the answer to everything.

Enter Stockwell Day, former Minister of International Trade, presently the head of the Treasury Board and our government’s Chief Witch Hunter.

On July 23, 2010 Day spoke about the long-form census on Edmonton-based radio station CHED 630AM explaining that why it was, ultimately, unnecessary:

We live in an information age where any 12-year-old kid can push any button on the Internet and find out any information he or she wants without threatening a citizen that they’re going to go to jail.

In this witch hunt, my friends, facts and statistics are our evil magic.

If Day’s comments that an Internet search by a 12-year-old child can replace the national long-form census is an indication of just how bad things are let me tell you that that kind of remark is merely scratching the surface.

Yesterday, in a press conference held for completely different reasons, Stockwell Day was hounded over his government’s views on the long-form census. The press conference turned quickly into a firing line with heated and sometimes absurd exchanges between reporters and Mr. Day. For his part, Day towed his party’s line, stressing that a compromise was unacceptable and that Canadians shouldn’t feel coerced into filling out the long-form census. Again, he stressed that the government can collect data over the Internet and that the long-form census is unnecessary in this age of technology. He didn’t explain how the government would do this, or how it would be any less invasive. Instead, Mr. Day went on to explain that his real concern was the inaccuracies in Canadian crime statistics, assuring the press gallery that they’re much higher than they seem as a result of “unreported” crimes.

Let’s be straight. As strange as it sounds there is such a thing as unreported crimes and they are reported on, in a voluntary survey that’s sent out to Canadians apart from the national long-form census. Day is not crazy to discuss his concern over these crimes although his comment that they’re on the rise is suspect to closer scrutiny. What Day is crazy for, in my opinion, is his misconception of the Internet and his apparent mistrust of statistics altogether.

A claim that the Internet can replace a national census reveals an inherent ignorance of not only the Internet itself but of simple statistical procedure and information collecting.

Important pieces of information, pieces that the government uses to plan social programming; plan hospitals and schools; build libraries and community centres; and allocate funding and assistance aren’t available for sleuthing on the Internet. Not legally, at least. Unless Mr. Day is suggesting that the government hire a group of 12-year-old hackers to backdoor their way into the school board’s payroll website he isn’t going to find out how much I make every year. Unless he also hacks into my hydro company’s billing website he isn’t going to find out how much I pay every month for electricity. Unless he breaks into my bank’s website and trawls my MasterCard statement he isn’t going to be able to figure out how far I commute to work every day or what I spend on groceries.

When backed into a corner Stockwell Day starts shooting, and he’s looking to kill the witches.

His concern, as voiced yesterday, was not with the lack of good data the government will be privy to. No, they can get that good data on the Internet. Instead, his concern was the intrinsic inaccuracies already present in the data that they have. Crime data, he said, is not accurate, it can’t be trusted. The irony is best summed up by Benoit Dostie, an economics professor who tweeted,

Crime statistics not accurate, @Stockwell_Day suggests. Pretty soon: all statistics not accurate #census.

The Conservative government, led by Stephen Harper, and championed by Ministers like Tony Clement and Stockwell Day, are on the hunt against facts.

Parallels abound. The Massachusetts colonists were a tight-knit, ideologically-driven and politically-minded group of people. By nature, in their small towns, they were secretive. They rallied against something they didn’t understand, turned it into a threat, and dealt with it the way they knew best. Similarly, we have the Conservative Party. A tight-knight group of ideologically-driven and politically-minded people. By nature, very secretive. Enter in the whisper or rumour of some black magic, these unnecessary intrusions, these coercions, and it spreads like wildfire. Who knows where the first idea that someone might be a witch came from, who said what, and who knows where the whisper about the long-form census came from but, once heard, it caught on. Surely she’s single, she’s widowed, she must be a witch. Surely there’s the Internet, there are voluntary census, we don’t need to force Canadians. We don’t understand it, therefore it must die.

We already know that there are no good reasons behind the Conservative move to cancel the mandatory long-form census, but if Stockwell Day is any indication—and I think he is a good indication—then we also know that the scrapping of the long-form isn’t even being done for a good bad reason.

The move isn’t based upon any solid evidence of intrusions or coercions, the facts reveal that Canadians haven’t been complaining, they don’t care. In some cases, it seems the argument to scrap the long-form is based solely on anecdotes and as I’ve pointed out even those most vocally opposed to the long-form census have nothing to stand on but mere hearsay. In other cases, and I think this is the worst, the decision seems to be based on misconceptions, misunderstandings, and an inherent mistrust of data. Day’s comments paint a clear picture, and it’s a scary one. The government doesn’t need data or statistics, it can be collected other ways, and besides, even the data they do have is inaccurate.

I hope we’re effecting some kind of change, some kind of second thought. I hope that by writing, again and again, about this outrageous decision that we’re causing someone to stop and think again. I don’t support a government who prefers to fly blind, without an idea or clear picture of what the country that they’re charged with keeping actually looks like. I don’t support a government that scraps an important tool in its toolbox for reasons that don’t make sense and, worse, are ill-informed. I don’t want to be a part of a witch hunt against statistics and facts solely because I don’t understand how they work or what they mean. There were those who stood up during the Witch Hunt and declared it all to be a farce. They stood on good evidence, they were of sound mind and judgment, and in many cases they were upstanding, honest citizens. In many cases, they were hung too.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 9:57 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.