The world's largest weapons manufacturer will be playing a major role in the upcoming 2006 federal census, and Canadians should be upset.

Next year the Canadian subsidiary of the U.S. weapons juggernaut Lockheed Martin will be providing software and hardware to process Canada's most sensitive statistics.

"It's very specialized software, using scanners, to actually digitize hand-written responses from 13.6 million households," said the director of the federal census program.

Great: they have nifty computer gadgets. But we question the ethics of giving $43.3 million of Canadian taxpayers' money to a weapons developer. The company is a large part of the corporate profiteering in Iraq and Afghanistan and are heavily involved in the “Star Wars” missile defense project.

Eighty per cent of the company's business is with the U.S.

Department of Defense and federal government agencies. Have a problem with any of the recent American imperial conquests? Your tax dollars will be going to the company that makes equipment like the “Millennium Gun.”

Visit their website and you'll find an easy-to-read catalogue of missiles, tactical aircraft, and other creepy doomsday devices. There are even downloadable videos of each one.

The company's main priority is to help destroy and kill—why should we be supporting it? It's already making tens of billions of dollars every year through contracts with the United States. There must be another choice.