On September 18th, Anne Kingston published an article with the results of a months-long Maclean’s investigation, which has found “that the federal government’s “austerity” program, which resulted in staff cuts and library closures (16 libraries since 2012)—as well as arbitrary changes to policy, when it comes to data—has led to a systematic erosion of government records far deeper than most realize, with the data and data-gathering capability we do have severely compromised as a result.”

We have been reading articles like this one by Mark Taliano, and reading books that document the war on science

But the Maclean’s article pulls the information together resulting in the conclusion that “Statistics Canada no longer provides a clear snapshot of the country, says John Stapleton, a Toronto-based social policy consultant. “Our survey data pixelates—it’s a big blur. And the small data, we don’t know if it’s right.” twitter-birdtweet this

We know nothing except total population about certain small towns, we no longer know how many Canadians live in poverty now, compared to 2011?

Disappearing data is only one part of the story.  Voices-Voix, a non-partisan coalition of more than 200 organizations and 5,000 individuals. has published a massive, damning June 2015 report “Dismantling democracy: Stifling debate and dissent in Canada”, which documents 113 cases of debate being stiffled in Canada and science being subverted.

This election stand up for science and for data.  Take the Science Pledge put together by Evidence for Democracy and sign this letter supporting increased access to information through freedom of information requests.