Were you among those who considered themselves lucky to receive the long-form Canadian census earlier this year? I was. My only disappointment was there was no Other Comments box where I could write who my grandparents and great-grandparents were and when and where they were born.
It appears I was not alone with my enthusiasm for the census.
According to an article in The Huffington Post Canada, Canadians’ response to filling in the 2016 census has likely been the greatest since the first one conducted 350 years ago in New France.
Statistics Canada’s chief statistician Wayne Smith told The Globe and Mail that this is “probably the most successful census since 1666.” (You can read about it in this blog post about Intendant Jean Talon who conducted the census largely by himself from 1665 to 1666, travelling door to door among the settlements of New France.)
Early indications show the 2016 short-form census had an overall response rate “approaching 98 per cent,” Marc Hamel, director general of the census program, told The Huffington Post Canada.
Response rates for the long-form census were about 96 percent, Hamel added, which is higher than those of the last two surveys in 2011 and 2006. The response rate of the 2011 voluntary long-form census was 68 percent.
Perhaps Canadians’ response to filling in the government form was because we were glad to receive back what we had lost.
Genealogists were among the many who applauded the Liberal government’s announcement last November to re-instate the mandatory long-form census that the previous Conservative government had eliminated.
Soon after the 2016 census collection process began in May, Statistics Canada’s online system briefly crashed. At first, it was thought Canadians’ enthusiasm for completing the form had brought down the site, but CBC News reported design flaws caused the issue.
On this year’s census, we had the opportunity to give consent to the government to release our personal census information in 92 years to “help future generations better understand the Canada of today.” There is no mention in the Huffington Post Canada article how many Canadians gave their consent.
