Jennifer Smith

Councillor Wendy Schau has submitted a Notice of Motion asking that the Town of Milton formally urge the Federal Government to reverse it's decision to do away with the mandatory long-form census.

In this, Milton would be joining the growing and virtually unanimous chorus of municipal governments and organizations condemning this decision - including the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

I think Schau's motion is worth quoting here in full. Here's hoping it gets the unanimous support it deserves.

ITEM: Elimination of Mandatory Nature of “Long Form” Census

WHEREAS; All orders of government use Statistics Canada’s Census data to inform their policy decision making and program/service implementation as they rely on the reliability and validity of this information. Business, non-profit organizations and universities also heavily use this data for their respective purposes.

AND WHEREAS; The data used is generally extracted and analyzed from the mandatory “long form” questionnaire which asked one-fifth of Canadian households questions on issues such as work, education, housing, income, child care, migration, ethnicity and family life.

AND WHEREAS; A survey methodology that relies on voluntary responses will compromise the efficacy of the data resulting in a significant negative impact on municipalities’ capacity to conduct reliable, accurate analysis of municipal issues on a longitudinal basis and on all municipal, provincial and federal government programs/services driven by the Census data.

AND WHEREAS; The federal government eliminated the mandatory nature of the “long form” of the upcoming 2011 Census through an Order in Council, without the consultation that generally takes place before such changes in well-established government operations are decided upon.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT; Milton Town Council urges the federal government to reconsider and reverse the decision to eliminate the mandatory nature of the “long form” of the Census.

AND FURTHER THAT; A copy of this resolution be forwarded to the Federal Minister of Industry Tony Clement for action, to all Halton municipalities for support, to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario for circulation and consideration, and to local MP Lisa Raitt.

The 1901 Census for Canada, showing just how long
we've been asking some of these questions

UPDATE: The motion was carried, unanimously.