So the federal government will no longer make it mandatory to fill out the long-form census.
Do you care? Probably not. The census form just isn't a big issue with voters - which makes it perplexing why the federal Conservatives are pushing so hard to change the policy.
It's even more perplexing that government mouthpieces have engaged in a propaganda campaign trying to convince people the long form census is filled with all kinds of intrusive and essentially irrelevant questions about things like bathrooms - when in fact, it isn't.
And it's still more perplexing to learn that the government is planning to spend more money on sending out more census forms and creating an ad campaign to try to convince people they should voluntarily fill out the form.
If the Conservatives believe the long form is so intrusive and filled with irrelevant questions, why not simply do away with it?
If the government believes the information is so useful they're going to campaign to encourage people to fill out the voluntary form, why not just leave it as a mandatory part of the census?
And besides all that, why even bring up the issue in the first place? It wasn't as if the general public was clamouring for change or protesting against the census - the public is much more concerned with important things like employment, health care, education, and so on. And as political analysts have said, the Conservatives aren't scoring extra voting points with this move, because people who tend to think the government is too intrusive now, tend to already vote Conservative.
In fact, it seems many people actually want the long form to remain mandatory. If there's been a storm of protest over anything to do with the census, it's been over the government's plan to do away with it. Even some Conservative think-tanks are saying making the long form voluntary is a bad idea.
And in a classic government "oops" moment, Tony Clement, whose ministry looks after the census, tried to stifle media attacks by saying Statistics Canada is in agreement with the government move - only to have the head of StatsCan resign to protest his comment and the decision.
It's all been remarkably similar to the government's stance on scrapping the long gun registry, when Conservative flunkeys endlessly repeated the mantra that police were supporting the move, only to find one police organization after another coming out against the decision.
Information gathered by the long-form census is used in all kinds of ways - including by various groups lobbying the government for program funding and support.
But once the long form census is made voluntary, the statistics it collects become flawed. The statistical sample that let groups generalize from the census to the broader population isn't going to be accurate - instead of being a specific 20 percent of households filling out the survey, it will be some other percentage of the one-third who get it.
Some groups are worried minorities, the poor, aboriginal people, and immigrants won't fill out the voluntary form - and they're the people who are most helped by groups using the collected data to push for programs and support.
As others have pointed out, the government itself uses data collected by the census to help create policy. Flawed data will make policies that much less informed, critics say.
But that may be exactly what the government wants.
Without firm statistical evidence to back up policy decisions, the government is free to base them on other things - like party ideology.
Without accurate data to back them up, groups that don't fall into line with Conservative ideology can be turned aside - the statistical data will no longer be there to back them up. It will become much harder for them to lobby for reforms that might go against what the government wants to support.
It's another way the government can make its decisions more subjective and work to shape society, rather than making policies and crafting programs that objectively support what's actually happening in the country.