You may remember last week when I talked about the government making changes to the long form of the census. Marianne Levitsky, a citizen who works in health and safety (she does not work with the census data, but recognized its importance) has started a petition to repeal the decision.

I urge you to sign it

If you are for the repeal, then you’ve already clicked the link. Thank you.

If you are against the repeal, I’d really like to know why. The government is citing the concerns of people about the intrusiveness, but mysteriously it’s only Conservative MPs who have ever heard these concerns. Considering the track record of this government, I consider it far more likely that they’re trying to undermine the census to justify reducing funding to social programs. If there’s a reason to oppose the census, please let me know in the comments section.

If you’re indifferent to the repeal (or the census in general), I’d like to remind you that as taxpayers (as many of you are) and beneficiaries of social programs (as all of you are), the census is used to target improvements in public-funded initiatives. I, for one, am against wasting my money on poorly-designed social programs. The census is key to health research, housing programs, business ventures, you name it. There is, unless someone has posted a dynamite one in the comments, no good reason to change the practice of the census. Please sign the petition, even if you don’t care about it as much as I do. It only takes a second, and the more people who sign, the less justification the government has to say that ‘average Canadians’ are on their side.

Please sign the petition.