Canadians love hard data so much they crashed the site
The Conservative government under Stephen Harper replaced the mandatory long-form census with the voluntary National Household Survey in 2010. According to spokespeople for the Conservative government, like Erik Waddell, a spokesman for former industry minister Tony Clement, the long-form census was removed to protect citizen privacy and to prevent citizens from feeling coerced into providing private information.
However, Canadians were so pumped about the return of the mandatory long-form census and its online presence that they flooded to the Statistics Canada website and crashed it.
[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Canadians were website-crashing levels of pumped for the return of the long-form census.[/pullquote]The return of the long-form census meant that, at the beginning of May, “a sample of 25 per cent of Canadian households [received] a long-form questionnaire,” while the rest “[received] a short-form questionnaire,” according to Statistics Canada.
Canadians were website-crashing levels of pumped for the return of the long-form census.
Having accurate and updated information of Canada’s citizen demographics based on social and economic characteristics allows for better planning of services used by those citizens. Examples of those services are: “child care, schooling, family services, and skills training for employment.”
The benefits are explained in greater detail in a statement released by the chief statistician at Statistics Canada, Wayne Smith, on April 28, 2016.
“The goal of the 2016 Census program is to restore the quality of data for special populations and at all levels of geography, including the coverage of small municipalities, to the levels of the 2006 Census,” said Smith in the release. “This will provide communities with the information they need to make decisions on services such as schools, roads, health care, policing, transit, and social services.”
The Liberal government’s website explains that “[w]ithout reliable and up-to-date information on the ways that Canada and Canadians are changing, governments simply don’t have the information they need to make wise decisions on how to spend Canadians’ tax dollars.”