Looking to check a fact? Look again

Statistics Canada locks down public access to data due to unspecified "cyber threat"

Are you looking to fact-check something the government, or your favourite blowhard columnist, or your Uber driver said about COVID-19, or about how many seniors died in long term care homes before COVID-19, or how yesterday’s federal fiscal update compares in some way with prior economic data, or even what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow might be?

Try again. Later.

Statistics Canada, the non-partisan and unvarnished collector, collator and purveyor of facts and statistical ephemera has shut down its website because: hackers.

No facts for you!

I was hoping to use it today to remind myself of information that once was known to me, but now is forgotten, misplaced or discarded: the number of seniors who routinely die every year in Canada’s old-aged homes. It’s a big number. Not quite as big as the number of seniors who died in the same long term care homes last year during the COVID-19 pandemic – but not so much less that it wouldn’t change your perspective on how bad the pandemic decimated Canada’s senior population. The cold-blooded fact is, most of the seniors felled by this virus were likely to die anyway.

But, I can’t prove it to you today, because the keeper of facts is closed. There will be no searching or viewing of the government data archive until further notice.

How long has the site been down? I don’t know. I haven’t tried to use it in a few days.

Is Statistics Canada reacting to, and hopefully making critical updates to prevent, a potential cyber-attack using the recently revealed “log4j” vulnerability? Possibly. They don’t say.

But, one would think an organization as big and as over-staffed as the Government of Canada would have enough IT mavens hanging around (working from home?) to respond to this threat at least as fast as Walmart or Amazon. Or, is that too much to ask for $650 Billion?

Also, on behalf of blowhard columnists everywhere, thanks for listening.

What say you: Is this just an honest security measure – or part of a “massive government conspiracy” to hide the truth? :)