Tomorrow, May 12th, is Census Day in Canada and like other households in Canada we received a census form in the mail a while ago. It wasn’t a form to fill out, rather it was information about filling out the census form on-line – a first I believe for the census. The census is done every five years and if memory serves me, we received the census form in the mail which we completed.
We completed the on-line form which took about 40
minutes. I’m not sure if we were fortunate enough to receive the long
form which goes to about a quarter of households but it included questions on a
range of subjects such as income, employment status, education, sexual
orientation, homelessness, religion, amount paid for utilities and property
taxes, marital status, and other areas that I may have forgotten being a
retiree and born in 1949.
Listening to an interview with a rep from StatsCan
this morning on CBC radio, he noted that the completion rate was 98% for past
censuses, which makes Canada the envy of other countries. There are a few
people who object to the census as an invasion of privacy. However, these
have been relatively few in past years. I have a suspicion that this may
be larger in these times when conspiracy fears are growing and separation
movements with them in Alberta and Quebec.
Having worked with StatsCan data in a past life and
worked with staff at StatsCan, I am able to affirm how important the data that
is collected in the census and other surveys conducted by StatsCan. The
staff that I worked with were dedicated and hard-working and wanted to produce
the best results for the people who utilized the data. Census information
is a valuable resource for academics and planners in many fields and is an
invaluable resource for the country. I would encourage everyone who has
not yet filled out their census form to do so. If you aren’t willing or
able to do it on-line, it can be done the old-fashioned way.
Censuses are not something new and have been around
for a very long time. Indeed, there is mention of censuses in the bible.
The book of numbers recounts a census taken by the Israelites in the
exodus from slavery in Egypt. God commands Moses to take a census of the Israelite
community in the wilderness of Sinai. "Take a census of the whole
congregation of Israel by their clans and families, listing every man by name,
one by one." This information was valuable in planning by Moses and
other leaders for battles with tribes they encountered before and after entry
into the Promised Land.
King David
also undertook a census of his kingdom. It was a census of the troops
available to him. However, as was often the case with David, his actions
often did not please God as, unlike in the Exodus, God had not commanded the
census to be undertaken. God saw this as an act of pride by David.
Finally, we
have the census that most Christians are aware of, being part of the Christmas
story. This was the first census to take place while Quirinius was
governor of Syria. This census is significant as it fulfilled the
prophecy of the Messiah's birth in Bethlehem according to the Gospel of
Luke. This has been problematic for the accuracy of the birth narrative,
as there is no historic record of a census at that time. But that is an
issue for another time.
There was a
saying when I was involved in planning and utilizing data, you can’t make good
decisions without good data. That may not always be true, but it
certainly helps. Fortunately, the census data has been a good and
valuable resource for Canada to use. If you haven’t yet completed it,
please do your part and complete the census and count yourself in as a
household in Canada.
