According to Erik Waddell, a spokesman for Industry Minister Tony Clement: "This change was made to reasonably limit what many Canadians felt was an intrusion of their personal privacy."
[NOTE: This concern was never explicitly reported in the 2011 Census Content Consultation Report (April through November 2007) although it was mentioned briefly that "content will not be added if deemed too sensitive or intrusive"].
Tony Clement later acknowledged in an interview that no consultations were undertaken before making the decision.
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In this context, the present survey will serve as an informal citizens' consultation process in response to the recent changes to the Census 2011.
Please take 3-5 minutes to answer the following questions (anonymously) and invite your colleagues, friends and fellow citizens to do the same before July 16th, 2010.
And Rick Heimstra, Director of the Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism, worries about the effect of moving questions re religious affiliation to the now voluntary long-form.
4 comments:
BCL,
That survey was linked to from the website datalibre.ca, one of a number of resources and petitions relating to this recent decision they've compiled there.
The religion data has not been collected since the 2001 census, by the way.
I'm in the process of updating the portions of my own website that present census data, to show whether it comes from the short form or long form, in order to give folks a fuller understanding of where they'll be losing validity.
cheers
I'm not seeing it there. Is the survey a Stats Can effort or some 3rd party thing?
Ah, it was the fifth item under "Action" in the post called "More on the Census Cuts". Honestly, I'm not sure of its origin, but I trust Tracey Lauriault who is at Carleton U and runs datalibre.ca.
Sorry, should have linked before, but was in a rush then.
I put this up at Dr. Dawg's yesterday:
More this morning from the Montreal Gazette.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/questioned+census+privacy/3259584/story.html
The first para says it all:
"A comprehensive report de tailing the feedback Statistics Canada received following t-he last census makes no men t-ion of the widespread pri v-acy concerns the Conserva tives now say are prompting them to make the long census questionnaire optional"
And the capper, the last para:
"The agency is no longer able to grant interviews on the issue and is now responding t-o inquiries with email state ments only. Clement's office responded to questions about the report by referring back to previous comments from the minister."
So, Tony doesn't like the census because SHUT UP, THAT'S WHY!
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