2006 CensusAction to access civic data at not cost to the public Action pour accéder au données civiques du recensement 2006 gratuitement
This is a new page to begin working on a petition or other actions related to the acquisition of the 2006 Census and other data from Statistics Canada at no cost to citizens. Content is coming from the list - civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
Ceci est une nouvelle page ou l'on pourra travaller sur le development d'une petition pour que les citoyens puissent acceder au donnee du recensement 2006 a d'autres donnees de Statistiques Canada gratuitement. Les idees pour le moment viennent de - civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca
'Ideas from the CivicAccess Listserve to date':
- Paper petition (HughMcGuire) - Official Rules to the Petition (Merci RobinMillette!) - English - http://www.parl.gc.ca/info/guipete.html & French - http://www.parl.gc.ca/info/guipetf.html
- Online Petition? Less weight? Are there new guidelines?
- Online FAQ?
- Letter writing to MPs?
- Contact MPs meeting. If we could find one or two MP who could “champion” our ideas, it could be a great help. But we need to meet them and convince them and “sell” our idea (StephaneGuidoin)
- seems the StatsCan policy on cost recovery has no basis in the legislation. Perhaps aim to add a new section (3f) to the act, which would add a responsibility for StatsCan to disseminate all data freely (CoryHorner)
- Use business analogy, look at Tory talk about transparency, competition, growth and innovation, small business & entrepreneurs, rural needs, frame the public good argument according to tory platforms(CarmenKazakoffLane)
- Aim to young voters (CarmenKazakoffLane)
- Show (1) how increasingly people - voters - are moving towards favoring open access and the opponents to it are old school, and (2) economic indicators that demonstrate the value of information to innovation and prosperity. Economists? and sociologists? can you help brought in to supply.(CarmenKazakoffLane)
'Action Items':
- draft a letter?
- draft some excellent short, sweet & catchy FAQs/taglines
- draft a good petition according to format (see guidelines above)
- write response to globe and mail opinion piece.
'Questions'
'1. Can anyone think of a good argument for the government foregoing the income and assuming the extra costs, just so the citizenry can get access to information on their own country? (JudythMermelstein)'
a. Cost more to manage selling it than it does to give it away! http://www.cla.ca/issues/enviro.htm (AndrewHubbertz)
a. From AndrewHubbertz “Here is the salient passage. It deals with total Statistics Canada budget, not the Census alone:“In 1994-95, Statistics Canada had an operating budget of $319 million. Of this, some $44 million was revenue credited to the vote (i.e. revenues generated from sales of products and services). According to information obtained through the Access to Information Act, these revenues may be broken down as follows:
*Federal entities $23,902,916
- Other levels of government 4,703,482
- Other 15,386,351
- Total $43,992,749
In other words, $28.6 million in sales were to other government institutions.Revenues generated from non-governmental sources amount to $15.4 million, or only 4.8% of the operating budget, before the costs of marketing, legal fees associated with license agreements, etc.” From Response to Bernie Gorman.
c. As a society we all lose - launch letter was pretty good!
'Place to look at for ideas':
- Official Gov. Can.Petition Rules - http://www.parl.gc.ca/info/guipete.html
- Regles officielles Gouv. Can. - http://www.parl.gc.ca/info/guipetf.html
- See reports on the Politiques CivicAccess page.
- See Cost recovery docs on the Politiques page of the wiki
'Recent Media on the Census!'
- The Globe and Mail article had a live discussion with
'Anil Arora, census manager for Statistics Canada', regarding the 2006 Census.'Of particular interest is the Q & A. on standard data being free is not true!' (TedHildebrandt)
