Alexandre Deslongchamps reports:
The Canadian government won’t reconsider plans to replace the mandatory “long-form” portion of the country’s census with a voluntary version, Industry Minister Tony Clement said.
The census, which will be taken in May 2011, won’t include a mandatory long-form questionnaire like the one that had been sent to 20 percent of households. Instead, Statistics Canada said it will send a voluntary form covering most of the same topics as the previous form as part of a new National Household Survey.
“The government does not believe it is appropriate to force Canadians to divulge detailed personal information under threat of prosecution,” Clement said in an e-mailed statement. “In the past, the Government of Canada received complaints about the long-form census from citizens who felt it was an intrusion of their privacy.”
Read more in the Washington Post.