It is done folks!

And now we know that it was a consultation gone bad. One where the second most popular item was voted off the island by the technocrats in charge – Media relations no doubt – the new source of Canada’s wisdom, truth and knowledge. It was also a consultation that was extended right when the Census submission was moving up the ranks, open data was in the lead and out of nowhere comes an HPC submission that rises to prominence on the day the consultation is extended.

We were never informed why the consultation was extended. I thought it was because it was broken for a weekend. I can’t confirm that because, well, we do not know who is in charge, I was told my Media Relations Official Michel Cimpaye that the ‘Sector’ is in charge. But alas, I think it was something more sinister, like, Clement did not like the Thorn in his side, the Census win, so he ordered the extension and then hid the Census submission. Or, maybe someone lobbied to extend so they could submit, maybe they listened to citizens (not). We may never know with this government.

Here are the real top 4:

463 votes – To Compete You Must Compute submitted by Susan Baldwin 2010-07-08 08:32:20 EDT, Susan Baldwin (Ex Officio) Executive Director of Compute Canada. Submitted on the same day the Consultation was extended. It rose very fast.

389 votes – Reinstate our Census Long Form aka Questionnaire 2B, Submitted by CCSD 2010-07-06 22:52:21ED, by Peggy Taillon Executive Director of the Canadian Council on Social Development and the Lead of the Canadian Social Data Strategy. Submitted 2 days before the consultation was extended, it rose higher than Open Access did and based on email logs it disappeared around Friday July 9th. It remained accessible via a direct link http://de-en.gc.ca/2010/07/06/reinstate-our-census-long-form-aka-questionnaire-2b/ but was removed (1) (2) (3) from the front page in the top 3 and from Theme: Canada’s Digital Content.

338 votes – Open Access to Canada’s Public Sector Information and Data, Submitted by Tracey Lauriault 2010-06-10 11:28:30 EDT, CivicAccess List and datalibre.ca. It was submitted in June and rose slowly up the ranks, beat by Census and then HPC.

197 votes – Improved access to publicly-funded data, Submitted by rakerman 2010 2010-06-03 22:49:09 EDT. Richard Akerman, his was the early submission, it was at the top for a long time and remained in the top 3.