Getting personal
A Canadian employer recently announced a search for workers to fill 25,000 jobs. Eligible candidates must be able to add simple numbers, read a map, and possess a valid driver's licence. The work? Counting all live Canadians.
Every five years, Statistics Canada - the agency that tallies who we are, how many fish we caught, trees we cut, or words we wrote - sets out to do a national head count. Accuracy is critical because information about where we live and who we are is used by policymakers to apportion tax credits, develop social programmes and parcel out regional equalisation grants.
For most of us, the census form asks for little more than our name, age and marital status. This time around, the census-takers want to know whether we are married to a person of the same sex. In the 2001 census, the literal-minded agency simply wanted us to report whether we were in a common-law relationship with a person of the same sex. But now that homosexual and lesbian marriages are legal in Canada, the government wants to know whether we have made it official.
But the short form doesn't get delivered to everyone. One in every five Canadians receives the long form, which runs to more than 50 questions. Each census, the long form gets longer, the questions more intrusive. Canadians are generally a compliant lot, trusting that the information they divulge serves a legitimate social purpose. You can imagine, though, that recent immigrants from, say, North Korea or Myanmar might have a less benign view.
I had a look at the long census form at a friend's house this week and found it breathtaking to see how much the government wants to know about him, his family and their activities.
The census asks him to disclose whether anyone in his house has physical or mental handicaps and, if so, what kind. It wants to know where everyone was born, and the ethnic or cultural origins of his ancestors (relatives more distant than grandparents). This being a nation of immigrants, that can get very complicated.
Other questions probe how many hours of unpaid housework he did last week, how much time he spent looking after his children, what kind of paid work he does, how he travels to work, what language he speaks there, and how much money he makes.
There have always been questions about income, but this year, Statistics Canada advises that if he doesn't want to fill out that section, he can give the agency permission to obtain all the details of last year's earnings from his confidential income tax return. Oh, really. Here is Statistics Canada's idea of a reassuring explanatory note: 'This is aimed at reducing response burden and improving data quality.'
Well, I'm sure that will put his mind at ease.
