Tracey posted this over at Datalibre.ca …:
There is an excellent article in the Toronto Star about why we have little understanding about the social demographic situation in Canada! Bref! No one can afford the research! In the article Truth carries a painful user fee; Carol Goar tells it like it is right now in Canada when it comes to access to our public data:
The United Way of Greater Toronto had to pay the agency $28,000 for government data showing that family poverty deepened in Toronto between 2000 and 2005, while low-income households made modest gains everywhere else.
It had to spend its donors’ money to prove that Toronto has the lowest median income of any major urban centre in the country.
It had to dip into its charitable givings to marshal evidence – already collected at taxpayers’ expense – that a one-size-fits-all poverty strategy won’t work for Toronto.
Absolutely absurd! This is at the heart of what is wrong in the country – too many bureaucratic obstacles in place to effectively change anything. All programs become impotent as too much energy is wasted on processing concepts and trying to leap over barriers. It’s a shame because the poor get poorer on a daily basis, not quarterly, yearly, or with changes in administrations.
and, such information should be easily available to any Canadian.
indeed … datalibre.ca is an information/lobbying effort to try to get the canadian govt to agree with you.