August 9, 2010

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Whole Show Blow-by-Blow

Today's guest host was Mike Finnerty.

It's Monday August 9th.

People fighting to preserve the mandatory long-form census are seeking an injunction to block the distribution of the new census.

Currently, to get around the injunction, the government plans to make the distribution voluntary.

This is the Current.

Census Fight - Marie France Kenny

We started this segment with a clip from singer-songwriter Jann Arden. The question posed to her is from the 2006 long-form census. It's one of more than 50 questions covering everything from ethnicity and language to income, education and lifestyle. And answering those questions used to be mandatory for the 1 in 5 Canadians randomly chosen to receive the long-form census. People who refused to fill it out could face jail time.

But the Federal Government has scrapped the mandatory long form census and replaced it with the voluntary National Household Survey. That new survey is set to go to the printers today. So to mark the occasion, we've asked some notable Canadians to answer some of the questions from the old, long-form census ... people such as Jann Arden and Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong.

We also put one of the questions to former British Columbia Cabinet Minister, Rafe Mair. And he feels personal privacy is one of the reasons not to answer questions on the Census form. That's pretty much exactly the Harper government's argument for canceling the mandatory long-form census ... that it's too intrusive and that people shouldn't be forced to answer the questions under the threat of fine or jail time.

But the government's critics -- and there are a lot of them on this issue -- say that making the survey voluntary will make the data that come from it statistically unreliable ... giving us a skewed picture of the country. One group -- the Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities -- is taking the Federal Government to court to try to stop that from happening. Marie France Kenny is the President of the federation and she was in Regina.

Census Fight - Don McLeish

We asked Jann Arden, Liberal MP and former astronaut, Marc Garneau, Canadian author Ajmer Rode and Tommy Chong's for their responses to the long-form question on languages.

A great many statisticians say that the data gleaned from all those questions is extremely valuable. Don McLeish is one of them. He's the President of the Statistical Society of Canada.

Last week, he and more than 5,000 other statisticians from all over the world met at the Joint Statistical Meetings Conference. They passed a unanimous motion calling on the federal government to immediately reinstate the mandatory long-form census. Don McLeish was in Waterloo, Ontario.

We requested interviews with Federal Industry Minister Tony Clement, as well as his Parliamentary Secretary Mike Lake. Neither were available this morning.

Articles: Global statistics industry leaders call for reinstatement of Canadian long-form census / Canada's stat crunchers join census fight

PART TWO

Bringing Home Kyle (Repeat Documentary)

Despite their best efforts, young people across the country will be turning their thoughts back to school in the coming weeks. For young people in remote first-nations communities in Northern Ontario, that can be a nerve-wracking experience. There are no high schools in many of those communities. So students head south to cities such as Thunder Bay. And for people who have never been away from home, that can bring a host of problems.

Late last year, Kyle Morriseau -- a 17-year-old from the Keewaywin First Nation -- was found dead in a river in Thunder Bay after a night of drinking. He was a student at the Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School in Thunder Bay, a private school for native students from remote communities. Since it opened in 2000, nine of its students have died. And almost every one of those deaths was related to alcohol.

The CBC's Ivy Cuervo spent some time in and around the school and produced this documentary. It's called Bringing Kyle Home and it first aired on The Current in December.

Ivy also spoke with Larry Howe, the Director of Student Services at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, about the efforts to help students like Kyle. But some say the school just doesn't have the money to do what it needs to. It's funded by the federal department of Indian and Northern Affairs.

Last year, it got about three million dollars for 148 students ... about 22,000 dollars for every student. That covers tuition, room and board, as well as counseling and transportation. But William Dumas says it's not enough. He's the Executive Director of the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council that oversees the school. We aired a clip.

Last Word - Deline Dene

Before we go ... 65 years ago today, a United States Air Force bombardier named Kermit Beahan noticed a break in the clouds over Nagasaki in Japan. He gave the signal. And a plutonium bomb went plummeting towards the city. Nearly 80,000 people died in the flash that followed. Captain Beahan never felt the need to apologize for his role in the bombing.

But here in Canada, many of the Dene First Nation from Deline in the Northwest Territories are still haunted by their community's part in the story. Some of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project came from the nearby Eldorado mine. Dene men from Deline took work carrying the sacks of milled uranium onto boats for shipment south. The community wasn't told how the ore would be used. And historians doubt that Canadian uranium was actually used in the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the Deline Dene are haunted nonetheless.

So we gave the last word this morning to Charlie Neyelle and Alfred Taniton from the Dene community of Deline. The tape was produced by the CBC's Dave Miller.

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