Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his weekly segment, Liedtke Has a Take!
Radio host Gene Valaitis and Jon Liedtke – who was a StatCan enumerator in 2011 for the National Household Survey – discuss a viral video showing a Statistics Canada census worker trespassing into a home. Liedtke emphasizes that enumerators lack authority to enter private property, calls for strict enforcement of existing rules, and suggests administrative fines for non-compliant citizens instead of court.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: Liedtke’s got a take. Good morning, Jon Liedtke.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene Valaitis.
Gene Valaitis: Hey, you posted this viral video online. I’ve seen it a couple of times. At first I thought it was a joke. Turns out it is not. It’s a video of a Stats Canada census enumerator standing right inside a homeowner’s front entrance. Now, I understand you worked as an enumerator yourself for the 2011 census. Now, I just thought this was like really weird, this woman coming right into a person’s home. Now, what was the first safety rule that was broken here by this woman saying “I’m from the government”?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I mean, Gene, there is absolutely no reason for an employee of Stats Canada to enter a home without permission, period, full stop. I mean, unless you’re a police officer with a warrant or in pursuit of a crime, or you’re a firefighter or a paramedic, there’s really no reason, work or personal, for anyone to enter someone’s private property without permission. That’s basic trespassing 101. When I was an enumerator for the 2011 NHS, I mean, step one of the training was respecting property boundaries. If a doorstep is there and the door is closed, you shouldn’t be touching the door handle, let alone trying to open it and then stepping beyond the threshold. And if an interaction turns hostile, like this one did, the job isn’t to argue with them or to state “I’m from the government,” it’s to immediately retreat and record the interaction in writing for posterity.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. You know, for the life of me, I don’t understand why people refuse to fill out the census form. It’s the basis of how things get organized, how things get funded. I don’t get it. I guess some people are paranoid. In any event, in that video, the worker keeps repeating, “I’m from the federal government,” to try to settle things down. Now, based on your time doing these doorstep interviews, does a temporary field enumerator actually have that kind of authority, or was she simply trying to pull rank that she obviously doesn’t have?
Jon Liedtke: She was trying to assert authority over a situation that she just simply didn’t have. Enumerators are temporary field staff hired to collect survey data. They aren’t federal law enforcement. Saying “I’m from the federal government” is certainly not de-escalation. That’s a power move that does the exact opposite. I mean, it was Ronald Reagan who said those were the nine scariest words, right? So when you say that to an anxious or skeptical homeowner, you’re validating their worst fears about government overreach. What’s really wild though about that video is that the worker clearly felt justified in what was going on. She kept defending stepping inside instead of realizing that she had breached a fundamental legal line, and then she kept trying to drop that authoritative line, which had no bearing on the situation whatsoever.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah. I just love that Ronald Reagan quote that you brought up. The scariest sentence in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Well, listen, during your 2011 days, you had to do follow-up from non-responders repeatedly. So is this kind of doorstep confrontation a result of intense pressure from Stats Canada to hit completion numbers, or is it just a classic case of an individual going rogue?
Jon Liedtke: You know, I think it’s a little bit of both. I mean, between the two scenarios there of the pressure from Stats Can or going rogue, I think right in the middle is where things are at. In 2011, that was a voluntary survey that Stephen Harper changed; it wasn’t a full legal census, so there wasn’t a legal mandate to fill it out, unlike the mandatory census today. So I was expected to visit a house almost daily for up to like three weeks, so that’s like 15 interaction attempts. So I get it, I know the field pressure is real, and now that they have the legal authority, I’d imagine that they just keep going back and keep going back because you have your set zone. But this is a worker who has gone rogue. I mean, Stats Canada is a massive, highly structured federal operation. It’s a federal department, it’s not like it’s a Crown corp, so it’s underneath a minister. There is zero chance official training tells anyone to trespass at this point. I feel confident saying that, even though it’s been what, 15 years since I was there. This comes down to a total lack of what appears to be common sense and a complete failure to pay attention in Stats Can training—or even basic life training. Come on, you don’t trespass!
Gene Valaitis: No kidding. Now let’s face it, a lot of people are paranoid. They think that the information they’re filling out in the census is going to some secret power. Now, the homeowner in the clip keeps shouting out—I remember watching this—shouting out about her privacy, data selling, government overreach. Now, when an official worker steps past a threshold like this, how much damage does it actually do to public trust in Stats Canada?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, huge, huge, massive damage, Gene. I mean, incalculable. We’ve already got a massive lack of trust among some Canadians regarding anything that the federal government does, and data collection more broadly, and this will fuel the fire. I mean, to fix it, Stats Can needs accountability, starting with severe discipline or even potentially firing this employee to make clear to other employees and to the public that this is just beyond what is acceptable or even, you know, just disciplinable. I think that this is clearly someone who doesn’t have the wherewithal to be operating in this type of a role, but that’s not for me to make the decision, of course. Beyond that, Stats Can needs real public education campaigns explaining how the census data directly drives local investments and how it appropriates our members of parliament and provincial parliament, and how it means that we get hospitals and all of the things that we need in our society and our neighborhoods specifically. But if people are, you know, running through conspiracy theory land, and then you have Stats Canada employees seemingly validating their concerns, we’re in the bad place.
Gene Valaitis: Tinfoil hat head, meet tinfoil hat head.
Jon Liedtke: Exactly.
Gene Valaitis: Now, you know what? I had the short form. I filled it out lickety-split, no problem at all. Now, as I understand it, the census is mandatory by law under the Statistics Act, I believe. But you know, I rarely hear of anybody being prosecuted for refusing to do it. So should Stats Canada start issuing, I don’t know, administrative fines like a traffic ticket for deliberate non-responders, or should the enforcement really strictly stay in the courts?
Jon Liedtke: I think that an administrative fine model is a completely acceptable fine for basic non-compliance when it comes to filling out the form. I mean, we don’t need to be dragging people before the courts because you don’t fill out a census, quite frankly, in my opinion. But obstructing a census worker, that’s a different story, right? I mean, that should stay in the judicial system. At the end of the day, we can’t just be a nation of carrots, though. I mean, at some point, we do need to use the stick. The census is a law, and if we don’t enforce our laws, there’s no point in having them on the books whatsoever. I mean, so like who really cares about public pushback against it when it is the law? I mean, we wouldn’t substitute not filling out the census with, you know, allowing murder because it just happens and the law’s there, but we’re not going to enforce it. So I mean, it’s silly, and you can see how silly it sounds to just ignore the law because some people might complain about it. But yeah, I do think administrative fines are probably the better way to deal with non-compliance.
Gene Valaitis: You know, I wouldn’t even want to do that job. I’d be frightened that some loon would come after me with a baseball bat or something like that. But okay, if you were running field operations for Stats Canada tomorrow morning, what immediate changes would you implement so something like this never happens again, and people feel good about sending and filling out and sending their census into Ottawa?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, you know, I don’t think, Gene, that there is a need for policy changes. And again, like I haven’t kept up to date on the internal field manuals that Stats Canada has for their enumerators since I was there in 2011, but I would presume that it’s pretty well still the same. I would just imagine there just needs to be strict compliance with the regulations that already exist on the books. What I would do is issue a field-wide communication immediately reminding every single employee, from the lowest one up to the highest one—and if I’m at the very top, I guess I’d CC myself on that email—and I would just remind everyone that, no, you can’t enter private property without explicit permission, period. And the message attached to that needs to be crystal clear: non-compliance would equal immediate discipline or up to dismissal. This is… I can’t believe that we’re having a conversation, Gene, on air about whether or not a Stats Can employee had the right or even just the wherewithal to enter a private residence. I mean, I felt uncomfortable walking onto people’s property to get to their front doors in some cases where they had signs saying we don’t want anyone coming onto the property, but you know, the job was the job. But to go into someone’s house, it’s just beyond imaginable.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah.
Jon Liedtke: But we’ve got the video.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, yeah, and a lot of people have seen it. I’ve had some… I was on the phone with a friend yesterday, he goes, “Have you seen that crazy woman from Stats Can?” You know, I have to admit, I did have to fill out the long form a couple of… I think was it 2011 or maybe the previous census before that one? And it really made me laugh because it was… one of the questions was: “Do you have an outhouse, and how many meters is it from your front door?” Do people still have outhouses like…
Jon Liedtke: Maybe at the cottage!
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, maybe. I guess so. Hey, listen, interesting take this morning, I love it. You have a good weekend, okay?
Jon Liedtke: Thank you, Gene. You too.
Gene Valaitis: There he goes, Jon Liedtke. Liedtke’s got a take, Tuesdays and Fridays right here on the show. We like Jon a lot.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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