Rest in Peace and Pride, Audrey tobias

Rest in Peace and Pride, Audrey Tobias

"I'm ashamed of my Prime Minister", she said.

Me too, Audrey -- different PM, equally soulless.

I agree with Constitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati that we're in "the 4th Reich", and Trudeau doesn't have the (5 letter word) to stand up for the citizens of his own country.  He at least should think of the inevitable impact on his own children, but I guess he thinks HIS kids will be okay because they'll have the cash (from investment in vaccines?) to buy off trouble. Good luck with that. His kids are going to be as screwed up as everybody's else's -- if not more so.

CBC: Audrey Tobias, senior who fought against Canadian census, dead at 92 - Dec 9, 2016

• 'She was a very impressive woman,' says lawyer who defended lifelong activist

VIDEO: "I'm ashamed of my Prime Minister"

• Interview with Audrey Tobias, the 89-year-old peace activist who refused to fill out the census
• "I knew the implications of not filling [the Census] in."

Audrey died in the very same year that this report came out:

Global: Sept. 2016 -  Decision by StatsCan boss to step down was long time coming

• Wayne Smith quit on Friday afternoon, and his resignation letters accused the federal government of hobbling his agency’s independence by forcing Statistics Canada to use the government’s central information technology system.
• Behind the scenes, the National Statistics Council — an independent body of experts that advises the chief statistician -- warned of future problems unless the government agreed with Statistics Canada’s request that it no longer use the IT system overseen by Shared Services Canada.

Shared? Private, but shared? A contradiction in terms?  Audrey Tobias didn't want to do a census that was shared with Lockheed Martin. "Shared Services Canada" sounds a lot like a cover-up.

What? You think StatsCan wouldn't lie to the Canadian people? Well, they certainly don't want any more of this:

Global: Oct. 2013 - Judge blasts feds in census refusal case

• Audrey Tobias admitted that she refused to fill out the basic personal information the census required because it was processed using software from U.S. military contractor Lockheed Martin.
• In 2013, Tobias, then 89-years-old, faced jail time for refusing to fill out the Canadian census because its data was being gathered using software from the American military contractor Lockheed Martin.
• Tobias was found not guilty of violating the Statistics Act, but not before she made headlines across Canada for taking a stand. She told reporters she would have been willing to go to jail for her cause, but admitted she thought "goodness gracious" as a judge handed down the not guilty verdict.
• Peter Rosenthal, the lawyer who defended Tobias, said he didn't think it was likely she'd be jailed but recalled her bringing her medications to court just in case.
• "Whatever the price she was going to stick to her conviction," he told CBC Toronto.

Fast forward to March 2018:

It seems that StatsCan still can't be trusted:

Ca.News: Mar 2018: Statistics Canada loses, mishandles hundreds of sensitive census files!

• The cover has been blown off Statistics Canada's assurances of iron-clad confidentiality of personal information in its control .
• It was only through Freedom of Information requests that CBC learned of several egregious losses of personal data. Hundreds of files were in the trunk of a StatsCan worker's car which was stolen! Other documents were left on a subway. And other documents were mailed to the wrong address.
• What is worse, StatsCan made a conscious decision not to make public many of these security breaches. It unilaterally decided that lost data was "not material". It also fretted that disclosure of its sloppy security practices might undermine public confidence in the census!

No kidding, eh? So much for any confidence in the integrity of Statistics Canada. I'm going to list more of the incidents in case the document disappears:

•  - An enumerator leaving a bag on a Toronto subway with grid card access, training manuals and forms with addresses and other personal information. It was never recovered.
• - A StatsCan employee losing 16 pages of an assignment list, blown away by a gust of wind in Crossfield, Alta. It included names, addresses and phone numbers but no other identifying information.

Only names, addresses and phone numbers? Oh, well that's okay, then.

• - One StatsCan enumerator bringing along a non-employee who had not taken an oath of secrecy, yet was privy to the collection of personal information.
• - A job recruiter emailing a request for fingerprints and other information to the wrong candidates.
• - An enumerator setting down a bag in front of a six-plex in Toronto while visiting an apartment at the rear of the building. It was gone when the enumerator returned and was never recovered.
• - A lost visitation record book with "remarks" that could affect 304 people.
• - Job candidates' information being breached when census recruitment envelopes were misplaced. The sheets included selected answers, scores and declarations of past criminal convictions. The agency believes they were misfiled and destroyed in error, but the Privacy Commissioner and Treasury Board Secretariat were advised of the breach.

Well, that's no big deal because ...

• The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada confirmed it has not investigated any complaints related to privacy breaches involving the 2016 census. The office considers privacy breaches to be unauthorized access to, or disclosure of, personal information, including personal information that is stolen, lost or mistakenly shared.
• A privacy breach also may be a consequence of faulty business procedures or operational breakdowns, according to privacy commissioner spokeswoman Tobi Cohen.

Sigh ... Perception Management is StatsCan's biggest concern:

• ... in the cases involving the Enoch and Stoney reserves, a decision was made not to notify the respondents about the privacy breaches. The incident reports suggest staff felt those already reluctant to take part in the census might be even more wary after learning about the loss of personal information.
• "Other possible risks [for StatsCan reputation] include: perception that Statistics Canada does not protect respondent data, and the possibility of not obtaining this information again from these respondents."

Read the rest if you have a strong enough stomach. StatsCan decided not to tell the respondents, and not to ask them to re-do the forms.  So what we can learn from this is: if it makes them look bad, well heck, they can manage without a complete census.

And you know what?  They can manage again without a complete census.

Here's what I take from it:  I'd be a fool to trust StatsCan.  I'm certainly not going to fill out any form online.  The Phoenix Fiasco alone -- 'an incomprehensible failure' -- is just one of the government's screwups, so who's going to believe it when they say that Lockheed Martin isn't still providing the software for the census?

Maybe the people who also believe we're in a "pandemic", fighting for our very lives, and only lockdowns and masks and job destruction and screwing up our children's lives can save us?

CTV: 15 million Canadian households to get census forms this week - May 2021

• If you don't fill it out you could have someone come to your door this summer to ask you the census questions in person.

RCINet: In pandemic, Canadians urged to complete census online

• As of May 3, 2021, every household in Canada will receive a letter in the mail with instructions on how to complete their questionnaire. Where households do not respond, an enumerator will be sent wearing personal protective equipment, but will not enter the home. 
• For those filing online, the government promises it uses a secure login process and strong encryption to protect people’s personal information.
• The government statistics agency notes that it depends on the census to “tell us about how our country is changing and what matters to us ..."

Government promises aren't worth a lick these days.  We know they already know "what matters to us": not being lied to and manipulated using scare tactics like a flu called "Covid-19", as if its very name is what makes it dangerous -- and not being lied to by not being told what breaches of privacy have already been committed!

I for one, do not intend to file online because I know what goes on there. And I'm very resistant to phoning a government telephone number.  Good lord, for starters, even Bell Canada could listen in to that, and nobody trusts Bell Canada.

​Besides, I did phone the gov't last Spring to find out if my tax forms had been received that I sent by Express Post (Canada Post being in total disarray at that time due to a "killer virus" raging through the country) and it took an hour and a half of being directed to other internal phone numbers (and a voice telling me that the employees use cell phones -- which, of course, are like leaky sieves), and being forced to tell them my social insurance number, my whole life story, including where I used to live and what was the apt.number there, etc., and what was the dollar figure on my previous tax form ...... to finally being told "yes".  I don't think I can go through anything like that again. It's too hard on my blood pressure!

More to read: Islington Tribune: The Census? Count Me Out

Canada: Count Me Out