Census Forms

[KrustyKidd]

I got the three page one. It had my address printed on it and I had to fill in my name. As i live by myself, it was pretty much done so I sealed the envelope.

[Charles Anthony]

What did you end up doing?

My primary question is what incentive exists for someone to complete the census form accurately. I don't see one other than civic duty, and a ridiculous law that will not be enforced and should be struck down if anyone tested it.

I wonder whether the law would be enforced too.

My recommendation is to throw it out. That is what I did. Eventually, they called me. Before answering, I asked them to prove who they were and they gave me a number and extension to call back. I called them back and they asked me all of the questions on the telephone.

The other issue of whether to answer honestly or strategically is different. I do not think it matters due to the sheer numbers of Canadians. Any skewing of the statistics is a drop in the bucket. Just like voting -- one person's vote makes no measurable difference.

[M.Dancer]

I just received the 2006 census form. I received in fact two forms (English and French), both 40 pages long. (I don't know if everyone received the same form as I did, or if I'm part of a smaller sample with a detailed questionnaire.)

Your first mistake was not putting a return to sender on the envelope.......I will tell you the honest truth.....the census people will hound you until you submit the form....if they deem you have fibbed.....they will endeavor to get the correct info from you.....barring that, they will press charges against you....

Now my story

I agree the questions are not what one would expect from a polling company.....

I got stuck on ethnicity***. It gave me a list of ethnic identies and a short space to identify them. I was stymied. I was perplexed. I was idle. So I called their help line and got a young swivel servant. I asked him my Q.

"Ethnicities" I said..."what does that mean?" I got an answer that was basically to desrcibe my lineage, my ancestors, what and where the originated from.

"Originated"? I asked again....I received the affirmative.

"Okay" I said, "How far back should I go?" The silly servant then asked a personal question...he asked if my parents were a "mixed marriage".

"Yes" I said. my father (a male) was Scots Irish born north of Glasgow and my mother (a female) was scots/welsh born in Quebec....doesn't get any more mixed than that....

So the nonfunctionary then says, "well you can go back as far as you feel comfortable"

I said thank you and proceded with the census.

Comfortably, I can go as far back as the early neolithic era.....so I traced my ethnicity this way..

Scots

Irish

Welsh

English (some bastard might have raped a great grandmother, you never know)

Scandanavian (some bastard might have raped a great grandmother, you never know)

Norman

German

Italian

Greek

Persian (indo european)

..............

.............

till I got to the end and proudly summed up my ethnicity as........

African

True Story

*** back in the 70s they asked in the long form if you wwere a status indian. Apparently 1000s of singhs, Mukerjees and Sethi answered yes.......they since refined their language.

[Remiel]

We got the long census too, but my Mom filled it out. I so wanted to, . Anyway, you shouldn't think of the census as just something the government wants, but something your descendants or relatives may want too. My Mom is in to geneology, and she has gotten a lot of information, or at least important clues, in old from many old census (what is proper plural?). I suppose that argument may not hold much water for you if you dont really give a damn about your descendants knowing where or when you were born though, or whatever other pertinent information they could find out.

[fellowtraveller]

I got the short form, and filled out everything except the part where you're supposed to provide names of residents.

I could not see any possible reason they needed to know names of residents.

They apparently already knew my name anyway, since a couple of weeks later they phoned, addressed me by name, and asked when I'd have time to tell them the names of the residents of my household. My answer was 'never', and I hung up. They never called back or sent me a summons to appear in court, so I guess I got away with it.

[watching&waiting]

If you really do not want to fill out the census then tell them you are illerate and they will ask you questions on the phone, just play dumb and you will be quickly dismissed from the task. But if you really want to be part of the true makeup of Canada then answer the forms truthfully and then you know that you have done your part. I do not like the idea that you are by law obligied to fill out these forms, but the law is the law no matter how stupid it may seem. If you falsify the info on the form, it is unlikely they will catch you. But if by chance they did catch you, it may well be that you will be heavily fined for this action.

[Higgly]

The census provides valuable information to the government and to the private sector that helps them make decisions about running the country and their businesses. I think it is a good thing and feel it is worthwhile to take a few moments to help us understand ourselves as a country.

[Remiel]

Ummm... isn't it or shouldn't it be illegal to release the census information to private businesses? I thought the whole notion of the census is that the information doesn't become available to the general public for 98 years, but maybe that is just for individual forms...

[M.Dancer]

Ummm... isn't it or shouldn't it be illegal to release the census information to private businesses? I thought the whole notion of the census is that the information doesn't become available to the general public for 98 years, but maybe that is just for individual forms...

Ahhh..... it isn't personal info they are releasing....just the broas strokes...you know, literacy, age demos.....

[fellowtraveller]

The census provides valuable information to the government and to the private sector that helps them make decisions about running the country and their businesses. I think it is a good thing and feel it is worthwhile to take a few moments to help us understand ourselves as a country.

I understand this, but can you think of any reason why they need to know my name and that of the other residents of my household?

Ummm... isn't it or shouldn't it be illegal to release the census information to private businesses?

They supposedly sell every bit of data (except names, purportedly) to anybody with sufficient money. It is a major income earner for Statistics Canada.

[Charles Anthony]

The census provides valuable information to the government and to the private sector that helps them make decisions about running the country and their businesses. I think it is a good thing and feel it is worthwhile

Worthwhile for who? You are missing the point.

The premise of the post is pointing out that it can be advantageous to YOU as an individual to falsify your submission.

[M.Dancer]

The census provides valuable information to the government and to the private sector that helps them make decisions about running the country and their businesses. I think it is a good thing and feel it is worthwhile to take a few moments to help us understand ourselves as a country.

I understand this, but can you think of any reason why they need to know my name and that of the other residents of my household?

Ummm... isn't it or shouldn't it be illegal to release the census information to private businesses?

They supposedly sell every bit of data (except names, purportedly) to anybody with sufficient money. It is a major income earner for Statistics Canada.

They need to know your name to verify that your info is correct.

[August1991]

The census provides valuable information to the government and to the private sector that helps them make decisions about running the country and their businesses. I think it is a good thing and feel it is worthwhile to take a few moments to help us understand ourselves as a country.

Which is more important to a democratic society, a completed census form or a completed ballot?

Why is one voluntary and the other enforced? Should a prison sentence be imposed if you lie on a ballot?

[Remiel]

I don't think I quite understand where you are trying to go with that, August. A census form is not a tool of a democratic society, it is a tool of a society. Also, a census form asks questions that you have the tools and answers to complete, whereas casting a vote requires a lot of guessing and careful dissemination of a lot of competing information.

I wonder if it would even be possible to measure what percentage of votes cast come from reasonably informed voters, and what percentage of votes not cast come from reasonably informed voters. Many people say that they wouldn't want mandatory voting because then we would just have a lot more disinterested types voting for parties they really knew nothing about. The question is, how many people on the other hand, who vote, really know what they are voting for?

The census on the other hand, is an easy thing. You just have to submit answers that you should already know, so that the poor statisticians can try to make sense of societal trends by comparing the answers to the answers of other countries, and so on...

Or maybe, another way to look at it, is a ballot tells you who they want, whereas the census can help tell why they want you.

Maybe that is just all my own rambling. I would like to see your explanation of your own question though, August. Maybe then I can suggest something less rambly.

[fellowtraveller]

The census provides valuable information to the government and to the private sector that helps them make decisions about running the country and their businesses. I think it is a good thing and feel it is worthwhile to take a few moments to help us understand ourselves as a country.

I understand this, but can you think of any reason why they need to know my name and that of the other residents of my household?

Ummm... isn't it or shouldn't it be illegal to release the census information to private businesses?

They supposedly sell every bit of data (except names, purportedly) to anybody with sufficient money. It is a major income earner for Statistics Canada.

They need to know your name to verify that your info is correct.

No, that can't be right - because the only way they could verify that all the info is correct is to laboriously crosscheck the specific data against another federal database - like tax records. That would definitely violate Privacy laws regarding both the census (StatsCan) and tax (Revenue Canada CCRA) databases. I would sue CCRAs flabby asses if they divulge financial info about me to anybody, including StatsCan.

Also, there is simply no way to crosscheck much of the other info found on the census form.

I have an expectation of privacy and a legal right to same. I understand the demographic requirement for the government to link my postal code with the income range for my household to my gender to my age to my marital status to my ethnic origin to how many acres I have in oats, but they have absolutely no reason to have my name or the names of my family attached.

[August1991]

I don't think I quite understand where you are trying to go with that, August. A census form is not a tool of a democratic society, it is a tool of a society. Also, a census form asks questions that you have the tools and answers to complete, whereas casting a vote requires a lot of guessing and careful dissemination of a lot of competing information.

With a federal ballot, you get to add one vote for a candidate (and you also donate $1.75 to a federal party.) Your one vote, let's be honest, will not decide whether the candidate wins.

With a single census form, you possibly transfer several thousand dollars from taxpayers in other provinces to your provincial government. (Equalization payments are based on census results.) A census form is a far more important ballot in modern democracy than a vote in an election. A census form also offers the chance to vote often. (ie. to lie by claiming to be a larger household.)

Is such a lie too strong?

Above in this thread, bilingual francophones are advised to indicate falsely that they are uniligual because financing of French services is based on census results.

Above, I suggested that two progessive heterosexual but same-sex roommates could falsely indicate that they are a couple.

Modern government is so pervasive, taxes are so large that a census form is a better way to express an opinion than an election ballot. If you mistakenly got 10 ballots in a federal election, would you use them all to dislodge Harper?

[August1991]

Either Canada's francophones are forgetting how to speak English or some weren't entirely truthful when filling out their census forms.

Statistics Canada suspects the latter is to blame as it searched for an explanation Tuesday for new census data that shows declining bilingualism rates among Canadians whose mother tongue is French.

Some 83.6 per cent of francophones living outside Quebec reported being French-English bilingual in 2006, down from 85.1 per cent five years earlier.

That puzzling trend was present in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and also New Brunswick - where only 68 per cent said they could speak both official languages despite 71.5 per cent reporting they could in 2001.

Furthermore, all of those provinces, and Canada as a whole, posted increasing numbers for bilingualism among francophones from 1996 to 2001.

"What we've seen for the first time is a decrease in the proportion of francophones who report that they are bilingual," said Statistics Canada analyst Jean-Pierre Corbeil.

"It's pretty unlikely that there's a decrease in bilingualism in provinces where the proportion of francophones who speak English most often at home is pretty high."

The downward trend presents a mystery of sorts, but one for which Statistics Canada sleuths are offering up a "plausible explanation."

It seems an anonymous e-mail may have soured the results.

One month before census enumerators hit the streets in April 2006, a cyber missive was launched onto the Internet bidding francophones to deny their ability to communicate in English.

Recipients were ominously warned that services to francophones risked being cut by the federal government if they admitted to being bilingual, Statistics Canada said.

....

CP

PS. I'm not to blame. I complete my form as accurately as I could.

Edited December 11, 2007 by August1991