Another Day, Another Desperate Spin

So, the Liberals have found some spare vertebrae and have a draft bill to reinstate the mandatory long-form census. John McCallum, point-man on this, said: 'A voluntary survey will skew the picture of what Canada really looks like as lower income minority Canadians will be less likely to fill it out,' which is pretty much what everybody who knows anything about this stuff has been saying.

When I read what Dimitri Soudas said, I actually laughed out loud.

Dimitri Soudas, the Prime Minister’s director of communications, was taken aback by Mr. McCallum’s statement about minority groups and low-income Canadians.

“It is blatantly outrageous that this (Michael) Ignatieff spokesman asserts that minorities and the poor should be threatened with financial fines and jail time in order to fill out the long form census,” said Mr. Soudas.

The Liberals “constantly look down on working class people and think they aren't as civic minded as liberal elites,” he said. “We believe that freedom is an essential Canadian value, and we don't think that it is right to try to frighten or intimidate people into surrendering huge amounts of private information to the government.”

After yesterday's (was it only yesterday?) 'The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!' laff-riot triumph of Cold War rhetoric, methinks the wheels on the ReformaTory bus are wobbling a bit.

Finally.

I fervently hope.