From bad policy to useless data

Remember this government’s oh-so-inspired decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census in favour of a voluntary “national household survey”? Well, a lot of those surveys are coming back incomplete, which is making the data even more useless than when it was simply statistically invalid. Great job, guys!

This government’s oh-so-brilliant plan to more than quadruple the costs of getting a pardon is being panned in public consultations almost universally. Too bad it’s not going to matter when they push ahead with it anyway, tutting and moralizing about criminals along the way.

Not that it should be a surprise, but the next “Senator in Waiting” in Alberta thinks that piecemeal reform of the upper chamber is a-okay, no matter the chaos that will result. Because we want to make sure our politicians are elected, whether it makes any sense or not, it seems. CBC pokes a few holes in her arguments here (like blaming the premiers for not holding “consultative elections” when most of them are complaining that the government isn’t involving them).

Ooh – divisions are forming in the NDP caucus over the Lower Churchill loan guarantee. It should be no surprise that certain Quebec MPs are not in agreement with their leader on this issue, but I’m sure we can expect lots of contortions to keep this looking like it’s still one big happy family.

In case you hadn’t noticed, in the post-strike world, mail is still running slow and Canada Post and the union are blaming each other. Of course.

The government is planning to launch a new online tool to help address the “skills crisis” facing employers in this country, rather than, say, creating a strategy to address the crisis through educational opportunities. Oh, and they also have no timeline on when this tool will launch. Remind me why they decided to announce it again?

Here’s a look at the changing, younger (and in some cases more fabulous) face of monarchists in Canada.

And despite it being their day off, Prince William and Kate nevertheless decided to stop in to Slave Lake to tour the devastation from the wildfires and speak to residents there.

Up today: Christian Paradis and Gary Goodyear are in Orlando to attend the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis and, no doubt, to make it sound as though their government has actually done something substantial about our space program rather than walk out of a robotics contract for an international mission that had been designed specifically for Canadian expertise, and other such stellar moves.