Count me among the critics of a switch to voluntary long census forms. Also, count me among those Canadians who, in a world of famine, war and oppression, take great relief in the fact that our  almighty critical national issue these days is: paperwork.

According to newspaper columnists who are responsible, the census debate, colossally boring as it is, could well be the cleavage in the federal monolith that finally presents to Canadians a distinct ideological choice at the polls and breaks what for 10 years has been a power stalemate in Parliament. By eliminating the legal obligation on one in five random Canadian households to complete a detailed questionnaire, the Progressive Conservatives make themselves out as champions of individual freedoms, foes of intrusive government; by supporting the current compulsory form, Liberals portray themselves as the stewards of sound public administration.

That's the analysis, anyway. Never mind that if Tories were true libertarians at hearts, they wouldn't seek federal office in the first place, or that if Liberals truly believed in good national government, same deal.

Nonetheless, the census has become an ugly political spat. The past few weeks have been especially sad, I suspect, for Canadians of roughly my vintage who recall when enumerating ourselves used to be good, clean national fun.

Goodness, how we enumerated! My own earliest memory is from when I was seven. Dispensing with its door-to-door surveys that year, Statistics Canada, or whatever the agency was then called, Her Majesty's Royal Dominion Tabulation and Ciphering Bureau, or some such in 1967, Canada hired only one census-taker _ a fellow originally from Cabri, in fact. His name was Bobby Gimby. Bobby was a troubadour, so named because he would “troop” from “door” to “door”  with his trumpet, tooting a little tune while counting in song all full-time Canadians living within each individual family dwelling unit.

“CA-NA-DA!” Bobby would sing, announcing his arrival at the porch step. Swinging wide the front door, the delightfully surprised Canadian family gathered, all grins, mom, dad, big brother, sis, the cocker spaniel, bopping and weaving to Bobby's bouncy ditty. Pointing in turn, Bobby enumerated: “One little, two little, three Canadians! We love thee!” (Garsh. Nice federal touch, that.) Then: “four little, five little, six Canadians...” and so on, from the Maritimes to Ontario (“eight million, three hundred thousand, two hundred, fifty- one little Canadians, eight million...”), eventually to Vancouver Island, where, after filing his federal report (“Now we are 20 million!”), Bobby collapsed in exhaustion, his lips so swollen from all the trumpeting that he could have furthered his musical career as either Mick Jagger or Steve Tyler.
You want the job done? You get a Saskatchewan boy.

(Explanatory note to young readers: The late Bobby Gimby was an extraordinary bandleader who, for Canada's 100th year, wrote a centennial anthem, a wonderfully nostalgic tune from which the lyrics above were reprinted for one-time hopefully comedic application. Steve Tyler and Mick Jagger are vocalists for the fogey orchaestras Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones. They have big lips. That is all. Please keep reading newspapers. Please.)

But the goal of the census is not merely an accurate tally of living Canadians. For that, the deal could be privatized. Simply hire Tim Hortons, at 8:35 a.m local time, census day, to count the cars lined up at its drive-throughs and then multiply by two. The long-form census collects important qualitative data on who were are as Canadians, defining a people.

We need to be forced. The only Canadians who would gladly volunteer to fill out federal paperwork are the same folks who promptly complete and return the warranty cards for new toasters. They are tragic people, a grim people _ in short, a people who already have far too much say in the affairs of the nation.  

Aug.5.10

Nothing beats the tranquility of fishing. All worries and cares vanish on the quiet of a peaceful lake, leaving only the  hypnotic, rhythmic cast of the rod and line.

YIPES!

First thing I do after I become premier is require all police to complete the same training in stealth and camouflage that conservation officers apparently master. Fishing Lake is almost 15 kilometres long from tip to tip and six across at its widest. Ours was the only watercraft on the entire lake when we set out, and we had been using our large human brains to outsmart walleye for barely five minutes when _ just like that _ they materialized, two uniformed authority figures in a boat.

Ninja rangers. That's the kind of startling snap inspection, I say, that would make safer our highways. I could be wrong. Text-messaging at 124 kilometres an hour probably takes more concentration than baiting a jig. The driver might remain oblivious to the police cruiser beside him, its sirens wailing, its lights flashing, the constable reaching out and tapping on the windshield with a billy club, etc.

Both conservation officers were polite and friendly as they checked out our boat, and I likewise theirs, but only out of curiosity, for any periscopes or parachutes that might have explained the sudden appearance.

 We were cool. I had my valid fishing licence, enough life jackets for the five of us and my spanking new federal Pleasure Craft Operator Card, for which I paid $42 and answered 36 moron-calibre questions on the Internet (The churn of water behind a boat is called: a) a wook; b) a wake, c) the big wet splooshy deal, d) broccoli), in turn receiving by mail a plastic card that certifies this Saskatchewan guy, who has never encountered a navigational buoy that wasn't an empty Javex jug anchored to a cultivator shovel, as a federally approved seafarer, arg. My three sons were clearly under the age of 16, with no requirement for an angler's licence, and Martin, he wasn't fishing, that is for sure.

Martin is from British Columbia. The reason Martin most definitely, cross our hearts, wasn't fishing _ and truthfully so, I swear _ was because he and his mate, my cousin, were merely passing through Saskatchewan. His cost for an hour or two on the lake would have been $31 for the minimum three-day out-of-province angler's permit, the same as I pay for an entire year merely because I wear bunny hugs, care about football to the point of clinical neurosis and call chocolate milk Vi-Co.
Is this fair?

Discrimination against fellow Canadians, I mean. It certainly didn't seem to be in good form to me, there in the boat with Martin aboard only for the ride. A fellow who lived much of his adult life on the B.C. islands, whose own Pacific fishing experiences were the stuff of Hemingway novels, had to sit, smile and nod as some distant in-law stubblejumper droned on about the clever ways of the wily slough tuna. A fair analogy would be a convenience store clerk in Nanaimo demanding I pay $31 for tub of margarine or put that Becel right back in the dairy case where I found it, because as a Saskatchewanian, what the hell experience or proficiency would I have with canola?

Saskatchewan is same province that requires no licence of the anglers who catch all the dang fish in the first place ‑ provincial kids and provincial seniors. Saskatchewan also hits Canadians who have the audacity to cross our invisible lines with Alberta and Manitoba with a foreigner surcharge penalty of four to six dollars for a campsite in a provincial park.

I know the arguments. Maintaining provincial parks and a provincial fishery comes at a cost to provincial taxpayers. Isn't what we're really saying, though, is that Saskatchewan  has reached a point of reliance upon government at which killing one's own lunch and sleeping in the bush is impossible without subsidy?

One fee, the same fee, a fair fee, for all Canadians strikes me as not only constitutional. Land of living skies, people, it's the neighbourly thing.