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If only the Conservatives had taken this attitude towards the 2011 census — which, incidentally, was also the position taken by the Conservative government in the United Kingdom — we would have had usable data for 2011 and we might even be preparing for a 2016 census adapted for the 21st century. Even Tony Clement can’t bring himself to oppose the Liberals’ decision to reverse the changes he made when he was the minister responsible for Statistics Canada.

This is understandable. Clement cannot have fond memories of the 2011 census, because his management of the file made him look foolish. It is by now reasonably well understood that voluntary surveys such as the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS) suffer from what statisticians can self-selection bias. Because participation rates are correlated with things like income, education and age, the sample is not truly random: it over-represents the sort of people who are likely to participate and under-represents the sort of people who are not.

Clement’s response to the anticipated decline in response rates — that by sending the survey out to more households, the larger sample would correct for the selection bias — was demonstrably wrong. Sending the NHS questionnaire to more people simply produced a bigger, biased sample. This mistake was made worse when Clement suggested that his advisors at Statistics Canada shared his opinion: Chief Statistician Munir Sheikh resigned in order to correct the record. (If there is ever a history written of the declining influence of the Fraser Institute, I nominate the moment that its current President Niels Veldhuis endorsed Clement’s position as a key turning point.)