Tory supporters told Harper they would switch vote over census

Conservative backers were among those who wrote to the prime minister this summer to denounce the scrapping of the long form census.

Of the 293 emails about the census that were sent to Stephen Harper during a single week this summer, the vast majority of them criticized his decision to replace the mandatory long-form census with a voluntary survey. The messages were obtained by the Canadian Press through an Access to Information Act request, and show that only seven per cent of people who wrote in supported the government’s decision, despite constant assertions from the Conservatives that Canadians find the mandatory census too intrusive. Many of the complainants said that although they regularly vote Conservative, they’d throw their support to another party in the next election.