Category: Canada

Anything related to Canada or Canadians

The stink about the census

One of the biggest challenges in statistics is collecting a representative sample: finding a subset of the population that will do a good job of approximating the whole group. When a dataset contains a lot of sampling bias and is not reflective of the general population, it is essentially worthless as a guide. That cannot be fixed by using a larger sample side, nor can it be dealt with via fancy mathematics.

The classic example of sampling bias is the ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ headline, from The Chicago Tribune in 1948. The newspaper got their prediction wrong because they sampled people with telephones, at a time when telephones were comparatively rare. Most of the people who had them were rich, and rich people were more supportive of Dewey. As a consequence, telephone polling provided bad information about the likely voting behaviour of the whole population.

This clearly relates to the decision of Canada’s federal government to make the 2011 long-form census optional. With a mandatory census, you more closely approximate an unbiased sample (it isn’t perfect, because some people will refuse to fill in even a mandatory form). With a voluntary census, you are always vulnerable to the possibility that the sort of people who will make the effort to complete it will differ from those who will not. In such a situation, the data in the census could be a poor reflection of the situation in the population as a whole.

That is why it is foolish for the Fraser Institute to advocate the use of voluntary polling or market research, in place of a census. The quality of data from such sources can never be as good, because sampling bias will always make it suspect.

Zoom also has a post on scrapping the mandatory long census.

Parc Poisson Blanc photos

Here are some more photos from the Parc Poisson Blanc camping trip:

Ice cream was a feature of both the drive up and the drive back.

Glancing right

Given that it took about an hour to get from the boat launch to our campsite, opting to go with one journey with two boats, rather than the converse, was a wise choice.

Reclining with guitar

My jumping co-campers

Much to everybody’s amusement, I took out my collapsible reflector to try and balance out the shadows on faces from the sunset. I think it worked rather well as a form of wilderness light modification.

My friend Rosa composed and shot this portrait.

While daylight brought a string of motorboats, the night was very calm and private.

Because of how far we were from civilization, and the absence of the moon, the Milky Way was clearly visible all night.

Dawn

Our boat was piloted by a man whose composure while operating motorized vehicles was on par with his trip masterminding skills.

He can also be used as a very temporary bridge across narrow stretches of water.

Parc Poisson Blanc

This weekend, I had the very good fortune to be invited to join a camping expedition to Parc Poisson Blanc, located in Quebec about ninety minutes from Ottawa. We bought food, drove up, rented boats, and took them to our superb campsite – a private locale with a beach, a forested area with ground ideal for walking and setting up tents, excellent views, and even a little lagoon featuring a black whirling swarm of baby catfish. The lake water was at an ideal temperature, and the company and food were both excellent.

I had the further good fortune that Saturday was a moonless night. Out in the wilderness, a dazzling array of stars could be seen, so many as to make it hard to identify familiar constellations. The Milky Way was clearly visible. Floating on my back in the water, looking up at the sky in the middle of the night was one of the most magical things I’ve done in recent memory. It felt like such an ancient undertaking, a connection to the whole history of humanity, the Earth, and the universe.

Though short, the trip produced such a change in my mode of thinking that returning to Ottawa felt like coming back to a familiar but semi-forgotten place. It will be odd to be back at work tomorrow, but I will certainly be showing up mentally refreshed.

Social inclusiveness and political power

It seems intuitively obvious that the political elite in previous historical eras consisted of people who had a level of intelligence and cunning that would impress us today. There is, however, at least one major reason for doubting that: social inclusiveness.

Think about the inner cadre of advisers to Henry VIII. In order to get into those positions, it was essentially necessary to be born into a circumstance that allowed such advancement. No matter how clever you were, and what an acute political mind you had, if you were born into a life of servitude in the fields, you were pretty unlikely to end up doing anything else. So, you take the population of Tudor England, exclude basically all the women and everyone otherwise trapped by the social system, and then those advisers are drawn from who remains. The same would have been true in relation to the advisers of Alexander the Great, Ramesses II, or any other historical leader you care to consider.

If you imagine society as a cone, with influence graphed on the vertical axis and the number of people graphed as the narrowing radius of the cone, those in ancient societies who ended up at the top were clearly drawn from a smaller pool.

By contrast, in states like Canada today, it is plausible that anybody who is extremely capable, savvy, and intelligent could rise and play a role within the top tiers of the political elite. By extension, it seems plausible to say that the caliber of people in such positions – both in Canada and elsewhere – is likely higher than has generally been the case in the past.

Of course, there can be a deep and wide chasm that separates advisers who are intelligent and savvy from those who urge courses of action likely to improve the general welfare of the population. That is especially true if being a psychopath helps with becoming politically influential.

Black blocheads

These window smashers who show up at every big international gathering certainly are annoying! They dominate the news coverage, obscuring any legitimate messages from activist groups. Furthermore, they act to justify the expense and intrusion of the heavy-handed security that now accompanies these events.

Incoherent rage against miscellaneous organizations (G8, G20, WTO, etc) doesn’t advance any sort of political agenda. It just distracts from serious discussions. Arguably, it also helps prevent the various legitimate organizations that attend these protests from engaging meaningfully with one another. After all, their priorities and agendas certainly do not align perfectly, and they clash on many issues. When protests are mostly angry pageants, it isn’t necessary to consider such substantive matters. The closer you get to actual policy-making, however, the more important it becomes to address contradictions so that something can actually be done.

Is there any way to eliminate the bandana-wearers as a constant feature of these gatherings? Obviously, massive security spending doesn’t achieve that aim. Perhaps a more energetic rejection of such individuals and tactics within the activist community could. Given how effectively the violent minority drowns out important messages, finding some way to keep a lid on them would probably benefit a lot of people.

Fringe 2010: Cactus – The seduction…

This energetic and engaging one man show is definitely a lot of fun. Jonno Katz combines the script with improvised interaction with the audience, accompanying his amusing portrayal of varied characters with the physical comedy that is the highlight of the show.

The show might seem minimalist, with one actor, one costume, simple lighting, little music, and no props – but Katz brings more than enough character and energy to make it feel well furnished.

Definitely recommended, though perhaps not for those who are offended easily by references to romance or sex.

ArtBank

This evening, I visited ArtBank – an institution of the Canada Council for the Arts that has been buying Canadian artworks since the 1970s and then renting them to government offices and private organizations.

The art is rented at 10% of its appraised price, for each year. The minimum term is two years, and the minimum annual expenditure per renting organization is $2,000. The price per work is capped at $3,600, meaning that some of the most valuable pieces are quite a deal to rent. For government offices, the necessary insurance is already in place. Private organizations need to provide written documentation of adequate insurance.

The collection includes 18,000 paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures by over 2500 artists. Sizes range from modest to gigantic. All told, it seems like a rather good resource. It’s certainly a place worth visiting, if the opportunity arises.

Liberal-NDP cooperation

Michael Ignatieff’s ever-wavering stance on cooperation with the NDP is increasingly annoying for me. Sometimes, he seems to think some sort of coalition (with or without support from the Bloc) could be a possibility, at other times he denouces the idea as ‘ridiculous.’ Regardless of which Canadian political parties a person supports, this sort of vacillation seems both muddled and opportunistic (since the coalition looks best when it seems most plausibly in reach). Regardless of political affiliation, it also seems increasingly clear that Ignatieff doesn’t really understand the fix his party is in, or how to get out of it.

I think it should be obvious enough to Canadians that the idea of a merger or coalition between the Liberals and NDP is not ridiculous, from the perspective of those who want there to be a serious opposition challenge to the current government. The effort to ‘unite the right’ by merging the Conservative and Alliance parties has been successful. Now, even though they have a minority of support, the Conservatives are consistently able to scrape together a plurality and govern as a minority.

Admittedly, there is a big difference between a merger and a coalition (and a lesser difference between a Liberal-NDP coalition and a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition). Some of the apparent vacillation mentioned above comes down to Liberals feeling more comfortable with a series of temporary Parliamentary alliances than with the actual melting down and recombination of major parties. That said, it may be a basic strategic reality that a united right in a first-past-the-post Parliamentary democracy produces the necessity for a united left, if there is to an opposition that can credibly and effectively hold the government to account. It is worth mentioning that Canadian democracy is also dysfunctional in circumstances where the centre-left has such an unchallenged hold on power as to not face any serious risk of being replaced in government.

With Parliament split between the Liberals, NDP, Bloc, and Conservatives, a fall election would probably just produce yet another Conservative minority, followed by a Liberal leadership race. I doubt anyone would be too sad to see Ignatieff go (at least Dion had some original ideas), but this outcome would just be a perpetuation of the status quo.

The two ways out of gridlock seem to be a Liberal-NDP merger/coalition, or electoral reform that introduces some significant measure of proportional representation.

Canada’s climate plans a flop

As discussed in a post of the Pembina Institute’s blog Canada’s record of failure in dealing with climate change continues to worsen. While the government once promised that Canadian emissions would peak forever sometime between 2010 and 2012, they now expect them to rise all across that span.

Policies the government expected to reduce emissions by 52 million tonnes (megatonnes) of CO2 in 2010 are now expected to produce reductions of just 5 megatonnes. Furthermore, the $1.5 billion Clean Air and Climate Change Trust Fund, distributed to provinces in 2007, did not produce the expected 16 megatonne reduction. Now, the government claims it cut emissions by just 0.34 megatonnes, with 3 more to follow by 2015.

These lackluster results, coupled with ever-rising emissions (especially from the oil and gas sector) demonstrate convincingly that Canada just isn’t doing its part on climate change mitigation. Future generations are likely to see this quite correctly as evidence of short-sightedness and irresponsibility.

Friends of Gin & Tonic

Friends of Gin & Tonic is an amusing website that sets out to mock climate change deniers. They describe their mission as: “Self Interest and Climate Change Denial” and elaborate by explaining:

We seek to inform the public of the findings of a handful of amateurs of unrivalled capability (but almost no ‘formal’ climatological expertise) that utterly undermine the so-called ‘scientific consensus’ that the planet is warming and that people are causing it. This ‘consensus’, the biggest scientific fraud in history, has been foisted on a gullible public by a politico-scientific elite intent on a single world government with themselves, via control of the United Nations, at its head. Exercising merciless control of the scientific literature by requiring that published work be consistent with such piffle as observations, physical principles, and mathematical models, this evil clique tries to suppress the promulgation of any alternative view. Small fringe groups like our sister organization the Friends of Science are thus reduced to using right-wing blogs, opinion columns of like-minded newspapers, and guerrilla publicity stunts at international meetings to promote their message.

Mockery is certainly part of the set of things richly deserved by climate change deniers, though it is not an adequate mechanism for countering their efforts in and of itself.

They came to my attention via DeSmogBlog.