Justin Trudeau, King of Canada, has issued his first edict: the reinstatement of the long census form. Minister in charge of Canadian census Navdeep Singh Bains, will jail people who refuse to divulge personal information required by the long census form:
[The Liberal government] didn’t provide details on how it plans to make sure that people actually fill it out, although Navdeep Bains, the minister of innovation, science and economic development, said “the law is the law” and the Statistics Act hasn’t changed, which suggests penalties would include jail time. Bains said restoring the long form will mean a return to solid, high-quality data.
It seems lost on Bains that saying that “the law is the law” does not make any particular action of the government morally right. Putting old ladies in jail because they refuse to fill out a form is disproportionate to the alleged crime. That it is an invasion of privacy and a violation of universal human rights makes it all the more despicable. But the new Trudeau government seems to be carrying on the tradition of the elder Trudeau’s attitude towards law, as we discussed earlier (see, Burning down barns is not wrong because it is illegal; it is illegal because it is wrong).
In the past, the government found one woman guilty of refusing to fill out the long census form. She was 79-years old. I have seen how government persecution of senior citizens can lead to fear and sometimes premature death, as in the case of friend of the Isaac Brock Society Mark Pinetree, who lived out his final years in fear of the IRS. He was a psychiatrist who had moved back to Brazil after becoming a US citizenship, not realizing that the IRS would persecute him even though he no longer lived in the USA.
In any case, if we were hoping that the government of Trudeau the Younger would respect the privacy rights of citizens of Canada, we now have tangible evidence that the new King doesn’t really believe in privacy. This bodes ill for those hoping for the repeal of the FATCA IGA.
Here is a new question for the long census form: “Are you or have you ever been a United States person?”
With just such a question, the government could send information to the banks that would help them to correlate with their own data and thus streamline the search for US persons with Canadian bank accounts.
Paranoid much?
The statistics act addresses privacy concerns:
Information is privileged
18. (1) Except for the purposes of a prosecution under this Act, any return made to Statistics Canada pursuant to this Act and any copy of the return in the possession of the respondent is privileged and shall not be used as evidence in any proceedings whatever.
(2) No person sworn under section 6 shall by an order of any court, tribunal or other body be required in any proceedings whatever to give oral testimony or to produce any return, document or record with respect to any information obtained in the course of administering this Act.
I don’t think the decision to reinstate the long form census bears any relationship to actions the Liberals may or may not take on FATCA. (and no, I did not vote for them).
@Jon, the statistic act thus nods to the fact that this information is indeed private and that should have precluded the government from collecting it in the first place. The Liberals also can do anything they want as they have a majority, and if they decided that they wanted to use the information in a manner that disagreed with the act, they could easily change the act accordingly. Thus, it remains more in keeping with privacy rights for the government not to be allowed to collect the information in the first place.
@RLee, I think government collection of private information has everything to do with FATCA.
@Petros
You are dead on correct on all points!
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
You cannot run a modern society without information. Harper was the sociopath not the people restoring sanilty.
@ Petros
I once told a census taker that if he was about to hand out a long census form to us then he had better just walk on by because I would not fill it out. He handed me the short form so all was well. I’m decades older now and this attitude that the Liberal Bains is projecting greatly disturbs me. Of all the Harper acts, this is the one I would prefer the Liberals leave alone. Won’t someone please start focusing on privacy because this oppression by surveillance and data harvesting is getting way out of hand!
@Joe Smith, we cannot run a modern society without collecting private information and putting the objectors in prison?
@Embee
I refused to fill out the long form census when we got it. My wife filled it out and sent it when I wasn’t looking.
Your wife is an enabler, Petros 😉
Petros, although I appreciate the points are you are making regarding Bain’s unfortunate remark, do you really think it is a good idea to be referring to our new PM who we are trying to get on our side as “King Trudeau” (or as “Prince” as you referred to him in previous comments at Brock)?
For those of us working hard trying to educate our new Liberal MPs on our FATCA misery, you are not doing us any favours in my opinion.
@ACanadianLivingInCanada, When ministers act like servants then it is inappropriate to dubb them as royalty. When they threaten to put little old ladies in prison, well, it seems to me that they very much deserve to be called what they aspire to be, their lordships.
I suspect that Jon is an astroturfer.
I don’t think this kind of US paranoia about the Canadian government belongs on a site dedicated to the real problems of accidental Americans and dual cititizens. Despite the attempt to conflate, these are different issues.
@FullyCanadian, US Paranoia? I do not understand your point. Which government is collecting the financial data of Canadian citizens and sending it to the IRS? The Canadian government or the US government? The issue of this post is privacy and government that feels free to collect whatever it damn well wants for whatever reason that pleases it. It will even collect information by forcing little old ladies to fill out forms against their will, and prosecuting them if they refuse.
Petros, you are not HELPING our cause here.
@ACanadianLivingInCanada,
Perhaps. But if the new government is indeed run by sociopaths, nothing can help our cause. And if they are not sociopaths, well then nothing I say here will hurt our cause either.
“And if they are not sociopaths, well then nothing I say here will hurt our cause either.”
If I call my car mechanic, “all thumbs Al”, whether he is a talented mechanic or not, I suspect he will not do a great job fixing my car.
Petros is all about the “here” part.
A conscientious mechanic will do a good job no matter if you call him clumsy or not.
A good leader does the right thing because it is the right thing to do. He will not shrink from doing right because some blogger out in some blog has mocked him.
And we are talking about people who have just threatened to put more old ladies in jail.
“A conscientious mechanic will do a good job no matter if you call him clumsy or not.”
Thought you would say that. On that note, I think we should all address our letters to Trudeau as “KING Trudeau”.
…was kidding in case anyone took that seriously.
I would not suggest that those who write letters address his highness as king either.