Are you going to fill out your Census?
- Thread starter kono
- Start date
Easy to fill out, but a waste of time.
At least half of the questions are the government already knows, so when you fill it out you're repeating yourself.
Most of the questions/answers can simply be compiled from a person's tax slips, government docs (SIN/birth certificate), school and employer records. But some reason the government doesn't want to reconcile their own data sets.
There's only a handful of questions that the government wouldn't really know unless they asked like the ones asking if you currently have trouble with hearing or seeing, or the small number of questions not formally tracked anywhere.
At least half of the questions are the government already knows, so when you fill it out you're repeating yourself.
Most of the questions/answers can simply be compiled from a person's tax slips, government docs (SIN/birth certificate), school and employer records. But some reason the government doesn't want to reconcile their own data sets.
There's only a handful of questions that the government wouldn't really know unless they asked like the ones asking if you currently have trouble with hearing or seeing, or the small number of questions not formally tracked anywhere.
Wrong. It's random. The long forms are given out to every 4th address, regardless of circumstance of the respondents.
Jesus Christ... the "government" is not one amorphous entity. When you talk about Statistics Canada and the taxman, or stats can and the cops, you're referring to different and distinct bodies and organizations that have absolutely ZERO cross referencing of information. Stop mixing apples and oranges, dammit. The "government" doesn't have your data. CRA has your tax return data, the RCMP has the record of your conviction for exposing your penis on the bus that one time, and Stats Canada has your census data. As mentioned before, no one but Stats Canada gets to see the raw census data, not the RCMP, not the CRA... no one. By the same token, Statistics Canada can't call Bob over at the CRA and ask him who the fuck lives at 15 Main street and what their birthdate is. It ain't rocket science people!
If that's the case, then the government depts should work together and share the info. Stop wasting people's time asking for the same info over and over again. There are so many instances where the government gets your data:
- When you're born (birth certificate and records taken at the hospital)
- Enrolling in school
- Anything to do with taxes and employment
- Health cards, OHIP
- Passports
- Driver's license
- The cops getting your info if you get arrested, get into a car accident etc...
- Any info the gov gets when you buy a property
Almost all of the info on the census can be taken from any of the above. The census already pre-bakes info into it when you log in, as it states your name and address on page one. Then you go through the motions of inputting your age, ethnicity etc.... There's only a small number of questions that aren't documented.
If Stats Can is some kind of independent record keeping dept than scrap that status and let them accumulate info like any other dept.
25% of households = every fourth address. Easy peasy.Why the 4th address??
No. No they should not. Do you really think the RCMP and border guards should have all your medical data at their fingertips? You might be comfortable with Sargant Stadanko knowing the ins and outs of your mental health records, for example, but considering he is not a doctor, I don't think he is qualified to make any judgements based on them. Do you really want every Ontario service counter drone to know you got the clap, probably from a sex worker according to your GP's notes? Do you want any one of tens of thousands of civil servants to be able to call up your annual income just for shits and giggles?
No. A thousand times no. There are very good reasons the data is segregated and you have to enter it each time you are dealing with a new service. Instead of pissing and moaning about it, be grateful that they respect your privacy, even if you yourself do not.
You do realize that Harper abolished it amid a huge public outcry
But if you were living in a cave you might have missed the news
You do realize that Harper didn't abolish a damned thing, he just made the long form voluntary instead of mandatory. Or to put it in statistical terms, he just fucked all the graphs and trend analysis of the past 50 years by changing the parameters of how the data is gathered. (Bravo, Stevie, you motherfucker.) But the census still happened, and the short form still worked the same as ever.
You really should get your facts straight before flinging accusations of ignorance at others. ...know the old saw "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?" Yer the embodiment of it, my friend.
It can't be that segregated.
If it was, how would Stats Can already know my name is linked to this address? They are getting the info somewhere. On the first page, the homeowner's name (me) is pre-baked into the template.
Its very entertaining watching people complain about the opaque statscan data requests while totally ignoring the fact that your internet provider spies on your downloads and browsing and inserts ads based on your latest searches, your phone company knows you called and where, your car tracks your driving records and a black box records how fast you are driving, your credit card tracks your purchases and travels. In short, what the government collects through the census is nothing compared to the data that you drop daily through what you assume are normal and anonymous actions.
Your worry is on the wrong target.
Yeah, I understand 25% = 1 out of 4.
But my question was WHY do only 25% get the long form, and why not every household??
But thanks for the math lesson :beguiled:
Not really sure why anyone cares about the info on the census.
Did it online. Took a few minutes.
And as someone else stated it is supposed to be for helping plan things. The argument that it won't is pure speculation. I have yet to see a school built in an area with no kids.
For anyone having trouble finding a doctor, a home for their elderly parents, etc they may appreciate it.
You may not see the usefulness but you are also far from qualified to assess it's effectiveness.
Did it online. Took a few minutes.
And as someone else stated it is supposed to be for helping plan things. The argument that it won't is pure speculation. I have yet to see a school built in an area with no kids.
For anyone having trouble finding a doctor, a home for their elderly parents, etc they may appreciate it.
You may not see the usefulness but you are also far from qualified to assess it's effectiveness.
Think it has to do with the time and money it would cost to make everyone do the long form.
I got stuck with the long form census and did it online. It was fairly easy but took about 25 minutes to complete once you input your code.
The purpose of the long form census has always been to get estimates so that Government and researchers have the ability to get representative information, as opposed to "exact" information. The basic census (which everyone has to do) provides the more accurate base line data.
Ultimately, it just helps everyone so that the decisions made by Government and those projecting the needs of our population can have an appropriate sense of where problems occur. For example, information about your financial situation populated over your postal code allow for detailed mapping so that they can get a sense of areas of need - so that adjustments can be made to programs that are targeted to address inequalities.
The long form census is critical to that planning function (and also allows researchers and academics) to better understand population trends. It is all of interests to fill it out, even if it is a pain to do so.
/xtc
The purpose of the long form census has always been to get estimates so that Government and researchers have the ability to get representative information, as opposed to "exact" information. The basic census (which everyone has to do) provides the more accurate base line data.
Ultimately, it just helps everyone so that the decisions made by Government and those projecting the needs of our population can have an appropriate sense of where problems occur. For example, information about your financial situation populated over your postal code allow for detailed mapping so that they can get a sense of areas of need - so that adjustments can be made to programs that are targeted to address inequalities.
The long form census is critical to that planning function (and also allows researchers and academics) to better understand population trends. It is all of interests to fill it out, even if it is a pain to do so.
/xtc
If you've read my post in various threads, I don't care about the government collecting data. Banks do it all the time passing info back and forth in some kind of master database..... that's why they all know what loans you have with everyone. You can have a $1 car loan with the most no-name credit union and somehow Royal Bank will know about it.
My beef is that the government already has 80%+ of the data in the census already, and that if they wanted to they can just connect the dots and reconcile the data they have and not even need to send out a census.
As I said before, they already know who I am and where I live (which they got the data somewhere), so all they have to do is keep reconciling their own data sets.
- A person's birth records will answer any question related to name, age, where you were born, ethnicity etc...
- A person's tax slips will answer any question having to do with salary, place of employment, duration of employment etc...
- A person's school records will answer any question to do with education, degrees, field of study etc...
These 3 things alone cover about 75% of the census.
They already know somehow who I am and where I live (pre-baked info in the template), so if they dig into their property documents, that would solve all questions having to do where you live, what kind of place you live, etc....... and that super informative question.... "How many rooms does your residence have"
Including this, and about 90% of the census is already covered.
Asking people to re-answer most census questions doesn't even make sense because people can lie or make mistakes, which won't add up to a person's real life documents, so the best thing to do is to actually reconcile their own docs as it would be more accurate. I already made a mistake on the doc. In the "# of rooms question", I forgot a bedroom.
I'm sure some people mess around and answer questions stupidly for fun. For example, let's say there was an internet campaign to mess around with the census info where people were told to input they live in 20 room mansions, earn $1 billion a year, and the spoken language is some kind of primitive Amazon Jungle dialect, so Canada would show results where the avg person reflects it?
Good point a lot of data is already known.
But many of the questions fall around who lives in your house. There are many situations in which a person could live on a house but not show thst on paper.
Or a few questions about languages spoken and of anyone does any farming.
Takes minutes to do.
But many of the questions fall around who lives in your house. There are many situations in which a person could live on a house but not show thst on paper.
Or a few questions about languages spoken and of anyone does any farming.
Takes minutes to do.
Some questions are valid as they aren't documented anywhere. So that's fair.
As for the farming question, I believe a person's tax slips would answer that as there's always questions about whether or not you work on a farm or do agriculture. If you answer yes, I guess it leads you to answer set of questions, or perhaps you get different tax breaks or something..... not sure as I answer no.
When I did mine, it spat my address out at me and asked if it was correct after I had entered my phone number. I figure that's because each serial numbered census form is "married" to an associated civic address in their database before we even start to fill them out. But it might be from public telephone records they automatically searched soon as I input my phone number. Dunno. But I do know that the website did NOT offer a guess as to my name.
Maybe you are half-remembering what it already "knew"? Unless you spoke to an enumerator and they noted your name and address in the database (which happens in rural areas where they deliver the census forms by hand rather than rely on Canada Post), I'm pretty sure that the website did NOT offer up your name until you had input it.
