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'Count Me Out' Responds to Questions About StatsCan's Outsourcing to US Firm

In this letter, CountMeOut responds to some questions about the validity of their claims about StatsCan's outsourcing of our Census to Lockeed Martin, and concerns about the privacy and confidentiality of Canadians, as well as ethical concerns.

It is becoming apparent that StatsCan is
distorting both the contents and the position of the CountMeOut.ca website.

To summarize the issue: CountMeOut.ca and StatsCan agree on the basic facts. It is in the conclusions that flow from these basic facts that CountMeOut and Statscan differ.

At many places in CountMeOut.ca, we confirm that Lockheed Martin's involvement is in developing the software and hardware. We are not trying to mislead anybody. But we don't accept StatCan's soothing assurances that the data is fully secure. We discuss this fully on the following CountMeOut.ca page:

http://home.primus.ca/~donrogers/privacy/index.htm

StatsCan are directing all their attack to the question of data confidentiality. This is a judgment call. I suppose the only way CountMeOut.ca will be proved correct is if data actually does end up with the CIA--but then again, the CIA does not have to inform anyone that they have snooped. We would rather err on the side of caution.

But StatsCan have completely failed to address the other issues that CountMeOut.ca raises:

1. The ethical and moral repugnance of millions of taxpayer dollars going to a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corp., one of the worlds biggest manufacturers of weapons of destruction, and one of the biggest customers of the US Pentagon.

2. The fact that outsourcing the Census to Lockheed Martin takes Canada another small step down the road to deep integration with the USA; another erosion of Canadian sovereignty, leading eventually to the demise of Canada. The further diminishing of Canada's international status as we are becoming viewed as a US client state. Can you imagine the uproar which would occur in the US if part of the US census were contracted out to a Canadian company, such as Bombardier. Look at the furor over the Dubai ports issue in the US.

3. Loss of Canadian census worker jobs. The two new Lockheed Martin innovations in the 2006 Census--online census filing and optical scanning of paper census forms--, will, if not checked, lead to massive job losses of Census outside door-knockers and inside data-entry clerks. Both in this census and especially in future ones. Many of the minimum co-operation methods advocated by CountMeOut.ca are aimed at 1)discouraging online filing 2) making the paper census returns unreadable by the Lockheed Martin scanning equipment, but readable by StatsCan Canadian wage-earning data entry clerks.

The only other argument that StatsCan offers is that the aggregate statistics arising out of the census are socially valuable--for things like determining transfer payments to provinces, etc. We agree that the final data is useful, but we say that again StatsCan is clouding the issue. www.CountMeOut.ca is not advocating outright refusal of citizens to provide census data--just to slow down the process and make it more difficult for StatsCan, particularly by making the census forms unreadable by LM scanners, but readable by live StatsCan wage earners. But at the end of the day, StatsCan will have its census data for all the worthwhile uses that StatsCan proclaims and will be proclaiming in their upcoming taxpayer-funded $13million advertising/promotion campaign.


For all of these reasons, we urge Canadians not to be sidetracked by StatsCan into only one aspect of the Lockheed Martin outsourcing--the confidentiality or not of census data. We remind Canadians clearly in www.CountMeOut.ca that even if confidentiality could be 100% guaranteed with Lockheed Martin's involvement (and it can't), there are many other reasons WHICH STATISTICS CANADA AVOIDS DISCUSSING, why Canadians should offer only minimum co-operation with the 2006Census.

I hope that we have addressed your concerns. The fact that StatsCan is distorting CountMeOut.ca suggests to us that we must be making progress!!

If you have any further questions/comments, we welcome them.

Best regards

Don Rogers
Kingston, Ont
www.CountMeOut.ca

posted by Annamarie at 5:16 PM