Taking Count

Just to expand on a reply I gave to a post of at Dawg's place on the subject:

The surface reason among the right in both the US and Canada for opposing the census is crazy, the subsurface one is evil.

The surface stuff is all Glenn Beck paranoia about the evil alien entity 'the government' trying to pry into people's lives so it can pollute their precious bodily fluids. The subsurface reason that the hard headed backroom right wingers who never let ideology or conspiracy theory get in the way of the power impulse worry about, is about keeping a proper count of the population from being done to try to remove the pressure to spend money and attention on communities that aren't part of the right wing coalition.

Spending money on the poor and the non-white is what they're in power to stop. Hard numbers that prove the need of these communities make it harder to neglect them.

There is a direct linkage between detailed counts with detailed questions and representation and spending in and by our government. Think about how precarious a hold the Conservatives have on power and think about why they would oppose a detailed count of Canadians that might result in pressure for boundary changes, reapportioning of electoral seats and increased spending in places they'd rather pretend don't exist at all.