General Chat

Sylvia I did my census a couple of days ago and had a very short one to complete in fact shorter than you're saying there! I had to confirm who lived in the house; names DOB; whether English and/or French was spoken fluently; sex at birth and now ID as; relationship to others in the house; whether in the armed forces.....I think that was it.....certainly didn't ask where we were born which was weird. If it took me five mins I'd be surprised.

I worked on the UK 1991 census and there was the same question about housing on there. We were trained how to explain this to the folk, but in the end were told to accept their info. I remember spending ages with an elderly argumentative non Brit man, who tried to get me to come into his house to measure the size of the rooms.

And a couple who lived in a house on the end of a terrace who insisted it was detached, as it had it's own wall built against the next door one.

Gwyn ....... those very detailed questions are only on the long form, and are intended to help provide information to provinces, cities and municipalities, etc as to how their population is doing/aging/ etc, with the idea that it will help plan future services and infrastructure development.

We don't have centralised services by the Federal Government, as in the UK ........... the Feds provide money, but the provinces are responsible for then either developing major infrastructures or passing money on to the Health Regions, School Boards, etc, and City/Town/Villages are also responsible for some of their own services. The census is the only way for them to get that kind of population information ........... I think Stats Canada will be able to pass that population information on within 6 months.

No names of course, just x% population in Vancouver have difficulty walking, seeing, etc. Or, as people working were asked how they got to work ............. x% walk, ride bicycles, take transit, drive, + distance involved .............. so do you really need to build more roads?!

I have no idea whether that extra information will be on the 2021 census when it is released in 2121 ........... but wouldn't that be interesting?!

That seems quite a late communication if your census is on May 11th.
Our letter came a lot earlier pre census this year.

They are asking you similar questions to those we had to answer, but MUCH more detail regarding your health and financial cost of services to your home.

......... is May 11

Today we received our "notifications". An official notice of our special number and instructions on how to access the census online and a phone number to call if you wish to have a paper copy.


OH grabbed it, took it down to his computer and started to fill it in before I had even looked at it.

I only found out when he came to ask me a question about my health! :-|

I was not a happy bunny at all!

When we calmed down, he found out how to re-enter the site, having shut it down in a paddy.

Approximately 75% of people will receive a short form census, with about 17 questions on it, the remaining 25% will get a long form with many more questions.

We got the long form, which included the same short form questions plus much more detail.

It took over 45 minutes to fill out online.

Some interesting questions on the short form were .........

........ everyone had to answer sex at birth and gender now

........ detail on where born, and citizenship

The extra questions on the long form included ...............

......... detailed questions re work or not, and why (laid off, furloughed, etc) on May 11 2021, since January 2021, on May 11 2020, before May 11 2020. and whether looking for work. It also asked when you had last looked for work ............... but there was no Retired box to check!

.......... the health questions asked about eyesight (able to see with glasses if necessary all the time, sometimes, often, never); hearing (with hearing aids if necessary all the time, sometimes, often. never); physical disabilities (able to walk, climb stairs etc with aids if necessary all the time, etc), any other health problems sometimes or all the time (just a yes or no answer, no detail required).

.......... number of rooms in the house (excluding bathrooms and hallways); owned/rented/or?; annual cost of gas and electricity, annual cost of water and/or municipal services if paid separately; estimated annual cost of city taxes (which include water and services in our case); how much we expected to receive if we sold it; how old it was. Interestingly, we were asked if we had lived at the same address on May 11 2020 and on May 11 2016 (the last census)

That last could be a big help for future researchers ............... but nowhere were we asked number of children born/lived/died, which has been so useful on the English 1911 Census.