04 May 2016

Census 2016 progress

According to a Globe and Mail article  between 1.5 million and two million census questionnaires had been completed by the end of day Tuesday. Considering the form does not have to be completed until 10 May that's an encouraging start.
Canadians appear to buy into the government message that the census is important, and that participating in it is a way for citizens to shape their community.
For me the process went smoothly. I found the letter with the 12 digit Secure Access Code in my super mailbox on Tuesday. While problems had been reported with the census site, www.census.gc.ca/, on Monday there were no such problems on Tuesday afternoon.  My return turned out to be the short form, so completing it took very little time.
I can now be assured my data will be there for posterity even if I kick the bucket before the 10th!
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5 comments:

  1. Unknown04 May, 2016 10:34

    Let's hope you have a few more good years, John!

    I got the long census (hooray)and the census site worked for me on Tuesday, as did the "stop for now and restart" option (not sure of the exact wording).

    I wonder if they posted a list of all the questions in the long census some where online?

    I put in one comment about the web site: the question about naming all your ancestral origins only has four fields for ancestral origins, and I wanted to list five. I just put Irish and Scottish together in the last field. I told them I knew that many because I was a genealogist. This time they allowed "Canadian" as an ancestral origin, because I recall that a previous census annoyed people by not allowing "Canadian" as an option.

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  2. Unknown04 May, 2016 10:40

    Hi John,
    In 1841 in England and Wales they filled in their householder's schedules during the week leading up to the night of 6/7 June. On the 7th the enumerator visited to confirm that those listed had actually slept in that household the night before. Do you suppose I will get an email on the 10th of May to confirm that my submission a week earlier still applied? I am not holding my breath! When I first went to the census site it was out of order asking that I try again later so it was perhaps system overload.
    Here's hoping we both stay alive until next Tuesday.
    As ever,
    Donald Davis
    PS I had our fellow Portugal speaker Chris Paton staying here fior seven enjoyable days during his BC tour.

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  3. Unknown04 May, 2016 10:42

    Hi John,
    In 1841 in England and Wales they filled in their householder's schedules during the week leading up to the night of 6/7 June. On the 7th the enumerator visited to confirm that those listed had actually slept in that household the night before. Do you suppose I will get an email on the 10th of May to confirm that my submission a week earlier still applied? I am not holding my breath! When I first went to the census site it was out of order asking that I try again later so it was perhaps system overload.
    Here's hoping we both stay alive until next Tuesday.
    As ever,
    Donald Davis
    PS I had our fellow Portugal speaker Chris Paton staying here fior seven enjoyable days during his BC tour.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gail B04 May, 2016 11:11

    I received mine, but a neighbour has not, and so I sent her this part of your blog this morning, saying 'hope you have yours by now' and she has not received it! So I gave her the phone number to call during the week. She is travelling abroad on Friday, and really wants her census!

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  5. John McConkey04 May, 2016 20:20

    I filled ours out this morning. No problem with the website. But here's the problem I later encountered. We have a cottage near Brockville which we don't frequent that often. We were there last week and there was no census letter in our mailbox. We won't be back until long after May 10. So I called the Census Support Line and they understood my problem. The gentleman was very helpful. He looked up the cottage address I gave him and he told me that a letter would be delivered right to my door. I told him my situation however and he agreed that in order for me to fill out my census form in time he would have to issue me a new access code over the phone - which he did. I went back to the website and once again everything was fine - much shorter this time since there would be no one in residence on May 10. After I finished I realized that I had been given an access code for an address without having to show any proof that I lived there. He didn't even ask my name. So I could easily have filled out the forms of some of my neighbours as well! Not that this loophole would skew the stats much but it IS a loophole.

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