Monday, August 2, 2010

Steve Janke's Awful Arguments Against the Long Census

This post by Steve Janke appears to be a troll imitating a knee-jerk conservative. He includes this stunning piece of insight:
Are they earning based on their learning? Well, the answer to that question is yes, always, because the market decides what the right price is.
It is almost as if Janke has never heard of the problem immigrant professionals have obtaining credentials to practice their profession in Canada. For example, there are 4,000 foreign-trained doctors in Ontario who cannot practice due to lack of Canadian credentials. There are also many foreign-trained engineers with this problem:
Michael Wu, a geotechnical engineer from China, is a classic example of what's happening. Accepted as a landed immigrant last spring, he came here with his wife and child, leaving behind a relatively prosperous life in Beijing, and now works for $7 an hour in a Vancouver chocolate factory.
Does Janke seriously believe that Canada is better off having Wu, who has a PhD, work at $7 per hour making chocolate?
In a previous post, Janke argues against the long form census:
Why does the Federation of Canadian Municipalities need national census data? It shouldn't.
 If you look at the open letter from the FCM (pdf), however, you will see that they do in fact need national census data:

In fact, over 25 pieces of federal legislation alone require Census data in order to allocate funds and target and evaluate services, with many more examples at the provincial, territorial and municipal levels.
 Janke:
 If a municipality needs demographic data for the municipality, then it should run its own survey.
However, if all municipalities need this data, having each municipality run its own survey is an extremely inefficient use of taxpayers' money.

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