Mayor wants province to address concerns

The mayor of Saskatchewan’s largest municipality wants the provincial government to address vulnerabilities in its recreational marijuana survey after it was determined people across Canada, and potentially around the globe, can participate.

The concern was initially raised by Marc Spooner, a University of Regina professor who ran for the NDP in the 2011 federal election, who called the survey “invalid” because there’s no way to determine if the responses are from Saskatchewan residents.

Spooner, who specializes in qualitative and participatory action research, said the data should not be used to form public policy because it’s susceptible to a form of hacking known as “freeping,” in which an online measurement effort is hijacked by a specific viewpoint or group.

After learning of the survey’s vulnerabilities, Saskatoon Mayor Charlie Clark said he wants the problem addressed quickly.

“Now that this has been identified, I hope the province tightens up that survey so that it does focus on what are the particular concerns and suggestions and ideas from residents in Saskatchewan,” he said.

The survey asks for opinions about age limits on cannabis sales, public consumption, cannabis taxation and other issues, including potential retail models.

So far, about 32,000 complete and incomplete responses have been received.

Ministry of Justice spokesman Drew Wilby said the government wanted to keep the survey open to all to ensure that Saskatchewan residents studying or working outside the province could take part.

He said Clark’s concerns are “valid” and the government would encourage him to bring them to the province.

“Part of the challenge with a survey is if you limit it through identifying data, your ability to receive results is quite flawed and limited and by that I mean that this is an anonymous survey,” Wilby said. “What we wanted to do is make sure that people could take it anonymously and we have faith and confidence in the people of Saskatchewan that they’ll take that survey and do so responsibly.”

Wilby said the ministry will take the identified vulnerabilities “into consideration.” In a subsequent email, he said a “data scrubbing” process will eliminate “possible junk or repetitive responses” before analysis starts.

“We need to get things going quickly,” he said, noting the province is “very rushed” in drafting legislation because the federal government wants to have a legalized system in place by July 2018.

The province has also been having public consultations and is working with experts and stakeholders outside of the survey, he said.