census Canada: where address from?

[scrubbyfish]

It has so far taken Canada's census almost a month to mail me my form. Why? Where does it get its address list from? Not tax returns?

[Ishmael]

I used to work for StatsCan about 20 years ago. This was before the Harper reign of terror, so I'm not sure if anything's changed, but with that caveat -

Stats Can has to create its own list of households to mail the census to. They are very concerned with even the appearance of sharing personal data* between government agencies, as that could result in people providing false data to maintain anonymity.

They don't get their data from Revenue Canada, or anywhere else, even though it would make their life incredibly easier, and cost less. Privacy and quality of data are things they take extremely seriously.

*NOTE: Obviously StatsCan releases its data in reports. But, once census data is combined, it gets reviewed before publication to ensure that it isn't possible to statistically reverse-engineer the data and identify anything personal about that area. For example, if there is one person of a particular religion in a neighbourhood, that particular type of data would get rolled up and combined with other neighborhoods so that one person isn't identifiable from the census data.

[scrubbyfish]

Oh neat, Ishmael, thanks!

It has finally agreed to mail me a census vs leave me threatening notes. This is good. The person paid to leave threatening notes did follow up to say they are only mailed to people in urban areas, while those in rural areas have to deal with this other system. I'm happy to cooperate with census, and always have, but I can't if they won't send a form or access number, lol. Meanwhile, my kid was trying to figure out where he would live while I'm in jail, bah.

Do you know how they ensure all the homeless people are given opportunity?

[everinprogress]

We've had the opposite problem- trying to convince them our house has two units, not three. It did previously have three, but many years ago and well before we moved in.

[scrubbyfish]

We've had the opposite problem- trying to convince them our house has two units, not three. It did previously have three, but many years ago and well before we moved in.

Oh tricky!!

It all seems like an extremely imperfect system. I'm not sure I would give its results much weight now that I consider the flaws that exist right out of the starting gate.

[RetiredAt63]

They try to get everyone, and people cooperate.  A friend has a second house on her property (separate street address) that is empty now, she sent the form back filled in to indicate an empty home so they would know. Mine was hand-delivered.  Literally, the person rang my doorbell instead of leaving it in the mail box.

I got the long form, and although it was a bit of a pain to fill out, it was so nice to see it back.  :-)