15 November 2014

Bring Back the Mandatory Long-form Census.

Ted Hsu, Member of Parliament for Kingston and the Islands has a new private member's bill to bring back the mandatory long-form census. Debate on this bill began last week in Parliament. Your help is sought to build momentum leading up to the vote expected in February.

"The government replaced the 2011 long-form census with a voluntary National Household Survey (NHS). Unsurprisingly, the NHS data is of poor quality and can't be compared with previous census data. Experts who rely on this data, and the continuity of these data sets, call the NHS data worthless.

Bill C-626 is a private member's bill that will reinstate the mandatory long-form census and expand the authority of the Chief Statistician.

Throughout this debate, and leading up to the eventual vote on Bill C-626, you are asked to please:

1) Write or speak to your MP to encourage them to support the bill and reinstate the mandatory long-form census

2) Write a letter or op-ed for your local paper explaining the value of the census and the need to pass Bill C-626

3) Share this information with your friends, family and colleagues

It's not too late to fight for the census! If you wish to contact MP Ted Hsu, please email ted.hsu@parl.gc.ca."

Comment:  In my view some of the questions on the long-form census were unnecessarily intrusive, but politics is rough justice. You can't get everything you want and in view of the loss of information necessary for public policy and desirable for historical purposes when the long-form census was dropped I support this initiative for restoration. I emailed my MP and encouraging you to lobby your's.

Thanks to Barbara Tose for the tip.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Compared to the many agencies and commercial interests (e.g. Reward cards for shoppers) now collecting data on everyone electronically, to say nothing of the databases being compiled for targeting voters, the long-form census seems benign. Most people got the short-form one and not the longer version, but at least with that census the population numbers were closer to reality.
Thanks for this info on a worthwhile private members bill.
Financial transfers to provinces, among other things, depend on population numbers being right.