A blunder move by Stephan Harper!

Today, finally Stephan Harper started talking about the long-form census and as it was expected by activists, he defended the decision of his cabinet member for making long-form census voluntary than mandatory. Today, two groups, Francophone and Acadian, will bring the federal government to the court for violating human rights as the consequence of cancelling long-form. The real issue is that whether one is in favor of individual interest, or societies interest. In other words, protecting individual privacy versus collecting individual private data for the greater good. While, there is no philosophical reason for either of the cases, I favor on societies interest simply because in a long run I believe most individual would benefit from it. This is just among my morale discipline. I use the same tactic and support for mandatory schooling. Of course, my list is limited and I never defend compulsory voting as Australians do.

I try to read Harper's rationale behind the pure fact of cancelling long-form census, and beside protecting people privacy information. Seems to me he is after getting attention of ordinal people for the next election which might happen anytime soon. Unfortunately, the survey by Ipsos, revealed that people are split on the issue and sounds like he couldn't reach them. By the same token now he has more oppositions among different religious groups, researchers, activists etc etc for making such a blunder move.