To: Douglas Newson
Director, Central Region
2006 Census
Statistics Canada
25 St. Clair Ave. East
Toronto, ON

cc: Maxime Bernier
Minister responsible for Statistics Canada

Dear Friends,

We write to you today because your employees have repeatedlythreatened us with jail and fines for refusing to fill out the 2006 Censusform. When asked why we should fill out the form, we are told, brusquely,“because it is the law.”

Attempts to explain our non-cooperation with this process are metwith the standard response: “The law requires that you do this.”

History shows that blind obedience to the law is dangerous.Ignoring the context of a refusal to cooperate with an unjust law orsituation leads us down the road of the jackboot. Indeed, as eminenthistorian Howard Zinn writes, “to declare that the law in all circumstancesis to be obeyed is to suppress the very spirit of democracy, to surrenderindividual conscience to an omnipotent state.”

Perhaps that is why we are lucky to live in a land where, on paperat least, all people are guaranteed freedom of conscience. And havingconsidered the issue of census cooperation in 2006, we refuse to make abutchery of our conscience.

Some brief explanation is in order here. As individuals, we devotealmost all our time to ending war and its causes, and to working withthose brutalized by Canada’s war economy. Therefore, we refuse to cooperatewith a process that profits the world’s leading weapons producer and warenabler, Lockheed Martin, a corporation contracted by the Government ofCanada to do a significant amount of census work.

Lockheed Martin continues to promote, produce and profit from themost frightening weapons of mass destruction known to humanity, includingnuclear weapons whose ferocity is many times the explosive power of theatomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

In 1996, the International Court of Justice in The Hague declaredthat the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal underthe principles of international humanitarian law. Lockheed Martin’s workviolates those very principles.

As we write, Lockheed Martin technology is being used to murder thepeople of Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and countless other nations aroundthe globe.

Lockheed Martin is also complicit in torture in Iraq, Afghanistan,and at Guantanamo Bay, where its subcontracted interrogation teams haveparticipated in acts condemned universally by groups such as AmnestyInternational, Human Rights Watch and internal Pentagon investigations.

Need we remind you that torture, and complicity in torture, areserious offences under the Canadian Criminal Code?

Further information on the insidious work of Lockheed Martin isavailable at CorpWatch: here, here, and here, among many other sources.

We also refuse to comply with your command because we object to thehypocrisy of government announcements about blind obedience to the law.

  • Can this be the same Government of Canada that daily violates therule of law when it arbitrarily imprisons human beings for years withoutcharge on secret evidence, and works to deport them to a country whereelectric shocks will be shot through their tongues, ears and genitals?
  • Can this be the same Canada that regularly violates numerouscovenants on social and economic rights, including the UN Charter, as itallows human beings to freeze to death on the wintry streets of our citieseven though the United Nations has declared poverty and lack of affordablehousing in this country a “national emergency” that requires immediateattention?
  • Can this be the same Canada that is regularly chided by the UN forfailure to address centuries-old First Nations grievances?
  • Can this be the same Canada that violates its own law by itsrefusal to implement a refugee appeal division for the thousands ofindividuals who, having sought safety here, are annually deported to anuncertain, dangerous fate?
  • Can this be the same Canada that sends its young men and women tothe illegal occupation of Afghanistan and instructs them to disregard theGeneva Conventions when turning over detainees to U.S. forces known toengage in torture and murder of those in its custody?
  • Can this be the same Canada that regularly exports machine guns,bullets, armoured vehicles and countless other billions in weapons salesto countries that abuse human rights?
  • Can this be the same Canada that appears to allow landing andrefueling privileges for CIA rendition-to-torture flights?

We recognize the need for compliance with specific laws, whetherthey be those that contribute to road safety or those, such as theNuremberg Principles, that remind us not only of our rights, but of ourresponsibilities, to prevent crimes against peace.

We are told the government of Canada requires census informationto develop social and economic programs to meet the needs of its citizens.Fair enough. Yet year after year, the United Nations and otherinternational bodies have to remind the Canadian government that it doeslittle to deliver on its legal obligations to fulfill those very social andeconomic needs.

So what, really, is the point of all this if the governmentwill produce fine statistics about poverty, homelessness, women facing maleviolence, lack of child care and other social crises, when there is noserious commitment to meet those needs? Lockheed Martin will make a prettypenny, but millions will remain left in the dust.

Daily, we work with the victims of the Canadian government’s ownhypocrisy and criminality.

Some of them include the over 13,000 human beings who facedeportation to grave injustices because they have not been allowed atransparent, legally mandated appeal. Yes, their unhappy fate is linkeddirectly to the Canadian government’s refusal to abide by its own law, onethat required the creation of a refugee appeal division when thelegislation came into effect four years and some 50,000 deportations ago.

Others we work with include some of the 250,000 homeless, three millionpeople who use food banks, or five million people one paycheque away from thestreet, to whom we distribute food and clothing at the foot of a downtownarmoury, highlighting the stark contradiction of a society that fails toprovide food and shelter while it spends countless billions on warfare.

In a society with such horribly misplaced priorities, it is theLockheed Martins and their ilk that act as predator and profiteer, sniffingopportunity in government corridors where their long record of corporatecorruption and bribery somehow gets glossed over as they unaccountablygobble up taxpayers’ dollars.

Faced with nuclear weapons in 1961, the late British philosopherand activist Bertrand Russell declared plainly: “This idea of weapons ofmass destruction is utterly horrible…I will not pretend to obey agovernment which is organizing a massacre of mankind.”

The evidence is irrefutable that Lockheed Martin continues topromote, provide for, and profit from ongoing massacres of humankind aroundthe globe. We will not pretend to obey an order to participate in a processthat contributes to the coffers of Lockheed Martin. We will not pretend allis well when the Canadian government daily violates its own legalcommitments to the very social and economic guarantees that are supposed tobe at the root of census collection.

We recognize that writing this letter no doubt places us in theline of prosecution when we could have found easier ways to avoid theknocks on the door or the incessant phone calls. But we recognize that theonly way to promote positive social change is to expose, acknowledge, andconfront injustice, even if that means some form of personal risk.

Given that the threats levied against us have not convinced us ofthe justness of your command, it is unlikely that prosecution itself andthe rest of your threats will make us change our minds or make usremorseful for this nonviolent exercise of conscience which, in properperspective, harms no one.

Better then that the thousands currently spent to track us down andmake us comply, the thousands that may be spent in prosecution, serveinstead as the seed money for much-needed national non-profit affordablehousing, for free AIDS drug distribution overseas, for a povertyelimination program, for water treatment in First Nations communities, forgovernment refresher courses on compliance with this country’sinternational legal obligations, and for all the other social needs thatremain unmet in this country as long as the government worships at thealtar of war and contracts those who would profit from organized murder.

In peace.