POST 1901 CENSUS PROJECT
Open the door to Canada's Historic Census
TOWN HALL MEETINGS |
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This page contains correspondence from Bob Brooks, relating to the Town Hall Meeting held in Halifax. Bob attended the afternoon session of these meetings. From: Bob & Terry Brooks To: CANADA-CENSUS-CAMPAIGN-L@rootsweb.com Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 7:13 PM Subject: [CCC] An Article from the globeandmail.com Web Centre (fwd) One very signifigant question not addressed either in the Ottawa session or in the afternoon session which I attended today in Halifax , is the question of the so-called "Promise". Freedom of Information requests filed with StatCan, along with informal and other formal requests for specific documentation of this so-called 'Promise' have met with ZERO response. There is NO documented evidence that a promise was given to the respondents to the 1906 and the 1911 Census that this information would FOREVER remain confidential. What Stats Can says was a promise of confidentiality is contained in its instructions to the enumerators and is no different substantially from what the enumerators were told in previous Census that have been fully released to the public. The ONLY entity concerned with the withholding of the Census data from the public is StatsCan itself and most certainly not the tax paying public who has to foot the bill for this sham and piece of bureaucratic garbage. What further disturbed me today was that the first 2 presenters out of a scheduled 4 were Nova Scotia government employees. One was the Privacy Ombudsman , the other was the director of the Statistics Division of the Department of Finance. This was to have been an effort to obtain the PUBLIC'S views - and not that of the government Federal or Provincial . Clearly their presentations were out of place and should have been made to the Expert Panel. In fairness, 3 additional presenters from the audience were heard but no questions from the audience were allowed and the only person to question the presenters was the moderator; and his view echoed the Stats Can view that a "promise" was given . All his probing questions reflected basic acceptance of this viewpoint. As far as any Genealogical amateur or professional interests are concerned the option solution proposed by StatCan is an exercise in absurdity!; and that's an understatement. Some one needs to advise the Federal government that if you want to destroy an industry and impede tourist developement and make Canada an international laughing stock; give full rein to StatCan's rigid misguided approach and lock it all up forever. If this issue of confidentiality of information was of such great concern why was it not raised many years ago when the 1901 Census was realeased? How come it took so long to surface? The whole exercise smacks of bureauocracy run amuck . Enough said , my "rant of the day" Bob Brooks |
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