Economy & Trade, Headlines, Human Rights, North America

POLITICS: Canadians Threaten Census Boycott Over U.S. Contract

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Oct 16 2003 (IPS) - Months after news broke that a U.S. firm purchased confidential data about the citizens of Latin American countries, some Canadians are outraged their government has hired a subsidiary of U.S. technology giant Lockheed Martin Corp. to work on the country’s next census.

Lockheed Martin Canada partnered with three other companies to win a bid to prepare a dry run next year of the scheduled 2006 census.

Government officials say the firms will earn 85 million dollars (64.4 million U.S. dollars) to introduce technology to the census that will permit computers to ”read” handwriting, allow Canadians to complete the forms online and integrate those various activities in a single database, among other things.

Officials have also vociferously denied in recent days that the information could be leaked from the company to the U.S. government or any agency outside of Statistics Canada. According to its website, the parent Lockheed Martin does 80 percent of its business with the U.S. military and other U.S. government bodies.

"The data collected from Canadians will be at all times under the care and control of Statistics Canada," said Mike Sheridan, assistant chief statistician at Statistics Canada, on Thursday.

"The census data will never be processed or stored outside the country. All of the processed data will be stored at Statistics Canada," he added in an interview.

But that does not satisfy Bill Blaikie, the opposition member of parliament who raised the matter in the House of Commons.

"I just don’t believe that can be guaranteed. For all we know, there may be ways of accessing that information that Statistics Canada won’t even know about," he told IPS.

The long-serving member of the left-leaning New Democratic Party says people are upset about the contract for a number of reasons, including that it was awarded to a firm associated with the U.S. military.

"This sort of compounds the sin, if you like – by contracting it out, not only to a non-Canadian firm, but to a big American multinational that has close relations with the military-industrial complex … especially at a time when the United States is more security conscious and is looking for more and more information about everybody."

Earlier this year a storm broke in Latin America when it was revealed that U.S. company ChoicePoint had purchased confidential information from a number of "brokers" in many countries and resold it to agencies of the U.S. federal government.

The information varied from country to country but included legal, banking and home ownership records that citizens assumed would be safeguarded by their governments.

In May, ChoicePoint returned data on Mexican citizens to that country’s government after official complaints, but reportedly continued selling information on citizens of other nations to bodies like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Seven Latin American countries launched investigations to determine who sold the data to the company and whether the deals were legal.

Leading the opposition to the Lockheed contract is a website called Vivelecanada, which has posted a form letter for readers to sign and email to Industry Minister Allan Rock, threatening to boycott the census if the deal is not reversed.

"It’s a trust issue," said site founder and editor Susan Thompson. "A lot of people are mentioning that they heard about Lockheed Martin in ‘Bowling for Columbine’," the Michael Moore film that both savages and smirks at the United States’ ”gun culture”.

Hits on the Vivelecanada site have jumped from about 400 to 7,000 daily in the past few days, Thompson added in a conversation with IPS, estimating that "several hundred" people have signed and forwarded the boycott letter.

In contrast, Sheridan says Statistics Canada has received about 100 emails, some in favour and some opposed to the contract.

According to Thompson, "it seems like (opposition) is building all the time because people are posting it all over the Internet."

Her group is now considering a coalition with other civil society organisations and the NDP to press the issue with the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien. "The main goal is to make sure Lockheed Martin does not win the main contract," Thompson said.

Blaikie says he is also fighting against the growing trend of contracting out government services. Traditionally, the census exercise has created hundreds of temporary jobs every five years.

"For sure, this will mean less Canadian jobs associated with the census. I object in principle to contracting these kinds of things out," he said. "It’s part of the global trend. What people want to build into trade agreements is for big corporations to be able to bid on services that are customarily done by government.

"The minister of industry was clear about this when he came out of the House (of Commons) … saying ‘well, you know, the trade agreements made me do it’."