GOSH: Conservatives announce mandatory census WILL begin in 2011

The federal Conservative government's move to scrap the mandatory long-form census in 2011 is favour of a voluntary one has prompted criticism from a broad range of groups -- News item, July 22, 2010

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TRAWNA – (GOSH Wine Services) – In a major concession (all right, an election bone) to the people of Canada, the Conservative federal government has apparently decided to do a complete and full census. Later today, Statistics Canada will announce that they will begin to implement a complete and mandatory census of grapes in Canada.

It is expected to commence next June in 2011, but it will have a dry run this fall when the new vintage is ready. Provinces that have few grapevines will hardly notice any activity, while regions like Niagara or Okanagan will be crawling with census takers.

Every grapevine will be independently looked at and itemized as to varietal character. The number of grapes will be counted, as well as the leaves and rootstock. Farmers are being cautioned against pruning as this would tend to diminish the number and quality of the raw statistics.

But according to sources emboldened by the uncovering of the alcohol and eco levy scandal in Ontario, this is just the tip of the iceberg or icewine.

Top investigative wine reporter Brett Grimsby has been following this story for days now, and he files his report based on several interviews with Miffed Mole, the collective name for our sources who are familiar with the situation, and who spoke to him on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge details while they were very close to the centre of discussions and while the matter under consideration had not yet been finalized nor announced to the public. While the decisions may or may not have been finalized internally, and while an announcement on the matter may or may not be imminent, possibly within the next week or two, that specific timeline is not really known.

Apparently, the real intention behind the census of grapes is to deflect all the fallout from the recent problems that have afflicted federal and provincial governments, even municipal governments in Canada. Eco levies in Ontario were the straw that broke the camel's back. Before that we had the flack from the HST and from the cancelling of the human census. There was the mishandling of the Line Bryan affair, the continuing problems with the First Nations (lacrosse, for one), and the general malaise caused by a four year old minority government.

The federal government firmly believes that all of its public relations problems will be solved by a census of grapes. That sort of fits in with their personal belief system: that all of this will go away soon, just give the people something productive to do.

Barrie is located 70 kilometres north of Toronto. More on the grape census as it happens…

Chimo!  www.deantudor.com AND http://gothicepicures.blogspot.com