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Forwarded from another listserv posting earlier this week; apologies for cross-posting. ******************************************************************* Anne Van Iderstine Manager of Information Services Nova Scotia Legislative Library 2nd Floor, Province House 1726 Hollis Street Halifax, NS B3J 2P8 (902)722-5043; (902)424-0220 (fax) >>> HELENE LEBLANC <[log in to unmask]> 2010-07-14 6:32 PM >>> [PLEASE EXCUSE ANY CROSS-POSTINGS.] Hi, everyone. In case you missed it, the first item on today`s CBC Radio One`s show, "The Current" <http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/07/july-14-2010.html >, was about that stellar decision not to distribute the Long Form questionnaire for the 2006 Census. The two interviewees were Ivan Fellegi, former Chief Statistician @ Stats Can, and Dean del Mastro, the Conservative MP for Peterborough and a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. (They couldn't get Mr. Clement from Industry Canada.) Try to listen to this part of the interview without cracking a tooth! ** The archived EPISODE can be heard at: < http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/archives.html > ** The quick write-up is below. He/le\ne (LeBlanc), Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario. :*) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WRITE-UP: Census - Ivan Fellegi We started this segment with a clip from Christopher Walken giving a census worker the run-around in a Saturday Night Live skit. The Canadian census isn't the sort of thing you'd expect to stir intense passions. But that's exactly what's happening. Three weeks ago, the Federal Government cancelled the mandatory long-form census. That's the more detailed census that was sent to 1 out of every 5 Canadian households ... the one with 53 extra questions tracking information such as ethnicity, disabilities, religion, education and income. The government cited complaints that the long-form census was an invasion of privacy. So starting next year, Ottawa will send a more detailed census to 1 out of every 3 households. But filling it out will be voluntary, not mandatory. At first, that change didn't seem to cause much of a fuss. But the opposition has been building steadily from think tanks and municipal governments to genealogists, economists and academic experts such as Richard Shearmur. He is a professor of urban and regional economics at the Universite du Quebec. And he's just one of the people making the case to keep the mandatory long-form census. Another is Ivan Fellegi ... Statistics Canada's Chief Statistician for 23 years. He retired in 2008 and he was in Ottawa. Census - Dean del Mastro We requested an interview with Industry Minister Tony Clement, the Minister who oversees Statistics Canada. He's unavailable because he is traveling this morning. But he did issue a statement yesterday explaining the reasons for the change. It reads: "In the past, the Government of Canada received complaints about the long-form census from citizens who felt it was an intrusion of their privacy. The government does not think it is necessary for Canadians to provide Statistics Canada with the number of bedrooms in their home, or what time of the day they leave for work, or how long it takes them to get there. The government does not believe it is appropriate to force Canadians to divulge detailed personal information under threat of prosecution." For more on the government's position, we were joined by Dean del Mastro, the Conservative MP for Peterborough and a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. He was in Peterborough, Ontario.