So I just received my 2016 Canadian Census notice in the mail today, complete with a personalized secure access code, presumably to initiate the self-destruct mechanism attached to the few remaining vestiges of privacy I have in my life, and to potentially out myself – and my family – to both the Canadian and US Governments. In the back of my mind I’m thinking, should I really be this paranoid, just because it’s increasingly likely that everyone is indeed out to get me?
While I have so far managed to elude the FATCA police by sheer luck of having never revealed my birthplace to anyone where I bank, I am now confronted with one of the first true conundrums of my post-OMG moment life – how to respond, if at all, to the following census questions:
2016 Census of Population questions, long form (National Household Survey):
STEP B
1. Including yourself, how many persons usually live at this address on May 10, 2016?
1: Number of Persons2. Including yourself, list all persons who usually live here on May 10, 2016.
1: Family Name(s); Given Name(s)STEP C
1. Did you leave anyone out of step B because you were not sure the person should be listed? For example, a student, a child in joint custody, a person temporarily away, a person who lives here temporarily, a resident from another country with a work or study permit, a refugee claimant, etc.1: No
2: Yes. Specify the name, the relationship and the reason.STEP E
Copy the names in step B to question 1. Keep the same order.If more than five persons live here, you will need an extra questionnaire.
1. Name.
In the spaces provided, copy the names in the same order as in step B. Then answer the following questions for each person.
1: Family Name, Given NameSOCIOCULTURAL INFORMATION
12: Where was this person born?
Specify one response only, according to present boundaries.
Born in Canada
1: Nfld. Lab.
2: P.E.I.
3: N.S.
4: N.B.
5: Quebec
6: Ontario
7: Manitoba
8: Sask.
9: Alberta
10: B.C.
11: Yukon
12: N.W.T.
13: NunavutBorn outside Canada
14: specify country13: Of what country is this person a citizen?
Indicate more than one citizenship, if applicable.
“Canada, by naturalization” refers to the process by which an immigrant is granted citizenship of Canada, under the Citizenship Act.
1: Canada, by birth
2: Canada, by naturalization
3: Other country — specify14: Is this person now, or has this person ever been, a landed immigrant?
A “landed immigrant” (permanent resident) is a person who has been granted the right to live in Canada permanently by immigration authorities.
1: No. Go to question 16.
2: Yes15: In what year did this person first become a landed immigrant?
Example: Year 1974
1: Year. If exact year is not known, enter best estimate.PLACE OF BIRTH OF PARENTS
24: Where was each of this person’s parents born?
a) Father
Mark or specify country according to present boundaries.
1: Born in Canada
2: Born outside Canada — specify country
b) MotherMark or specify country according to present boundaries.
1: Born in Canada
2: Born outside Canada — specify country
The bottom of the notice reads:
By law, your responses will be kept confidential.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Didn’t the CRA also recently insist that their handing-over of the financial information of hundreds of thousands of Canadians to the US Government is also being kept confidential? How reassuring.
Now, I’m well aware that there are a million other data points out there already broadcasting every detail of my life to whichever three-letter agency might be interested, but it genuinely concerns me that this very explicit package of personal information is being demanded so unequivocally, right now, when so many of us are still figuratively hiding in the attic, not all that far removed from Anne Frank – and the Canadian Government damn well knows it. The threat is right there on the front of the notice:
Complete the census – it’s the law.
So, that perennial philosophical question: what would Jesus do?
If you are a US Person living in Canada in 2016, what will you do?
I received the short form. Like Hieronymus I don’t remember being asked for name in any previous census.
Is the requirement for name new this year or is my memory foggy?
The short form does not ask for info on citizenship or place of birth.
“Hieronymus says
May 4, 2016 at 2:08 am
Holy Crap!
I’m trying to think back to the last census — I can’t remember having to state my name at all or the names of others living in my house. I’m approaching my 80th year and I honestly can’t remember. Somebody help me here? I’ve been a citizen since 1974 and a resident since ’64 — and this particular document has the bad smell of 1938 to this old Jewish boy from the Bronx.
Of course ten years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago and more, I still felt safe, secure and Canadian, and probably wouldn’t have minded proudly answering everything — but now… where to run to is my question, not whether to fill out census form.
Hieronymus”
Yes the implications around Bill C-24 are positively scary when combined with questions about ones citizenship and parental citizenship. Even though the younger claims to have pulled the most rotten tooth of C-24, there is no guarantee it won’t grow back.
As to confidentiality that is not even remotely believable when an electronically filed census goes directly to Lockheed Martin, who uses that bar code to gather your income data from a CRA data base. Having that much CRA data in the hands of an American defense contractor is extremely scary!
Thankfully we got the short form but the long form bastard child may be only five years away. ;(
The 2006 census questions did include names. It goes to show how things stand out depending on your personal circumstances. I also don’t remember having to put in my name. This is the main problem as we all know with getting the FATCA issue out there.
http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/ref/about-apropos/version-eng.cfm
I’m just going 100% with BC Doc’s recommendation. In every incriminating case, USA or US or American will be replaced with Montreal, Quebec or Canadian. Simple as that.
I like the suggestion to fill out the form in Klingon.
I got the long form. I filled it out truthfully. I was born in the US and my citizenship is Canadian. I think the Canadian government needs to know how many US born Canadians they are affecting with their irresponsible decisions, and if we all hide our birthplaces then they will write off our cause as affecting only a small handful of people.
Personally, I don’t care what the US believes about their ownership of me. I do not recognize their authority, so stating that I was born in the US makes no difference there, but I DO want the Canadian government to know how many of us are here and what a potential force we are to be reckoned with!
Not only that, but they should also be made to see how much of an ongoing fiscal drain to the Canadian economy they have signed up to, in allowing a large number their US born Canadians to be sucked financially dry by a foreign government through penalties and confiscation.
I fully understand the fear that is experienced by many of you, but I think that in this case it is misplaced. I have considerable experience with the census, having worked with it as government information librarian in a Canadian university for about 23 years.
First, the census has always asked for names. This personal information has enjoyed the highest level of security and is only accessible to Statistics Canada employees, and for authorized reasons. Personal information from the census has been released after 92 years and is an important resource for genealogists. I believe release of this information has ceased, but I don’t have time to look into this, as I have a flight to catch.
Statistics Canada is not allowed to share personal information with other government agencies. There are very severe penalties for employees who break these rules.
The census has ALWAYS asked for name, age, place of birth, nationality, religion, etc. And not just in Canada. That’s the reason why census information is widely used (and very useful) for anyone researching their family history. The abbreviated short form is relatively new.
@GwEvil. Now THAT is the first convincing argument I have heard in favor of truthfully filling out a long form! You may have made my life easier if I am unlucky enough to win the long form lottery. Thank you; if I am a lucky winner I think I’ll just fill it out and not worry about it. But that still doesn’t mean I trust the bastards.
It is a sad state of affairs that both governments have screwed us so totally (and continue to do so) that trust has been destroyed to the point that we are even having a discussion on this subject.
Like Gwen, I plan to answer truthfully. I don’t think that we do Canadians with ‘US person’ status any favours by pretending we don’t exist.
@maz57 – I, by no means, trust the bastards either, but I do want them to know we are here, how many of us there are, and that we are FED UP and we are not going to TAKE IT ANYMORE!
@WhiteKat – Exactly!
If the bank asks me however, I will lie, as this is just affects me personally. The long census form is a different animal.
How can we even advocate for ourselves as a group if we don’t know how many of us there are?
Think cost/benefit analysis. How much could I potentially hurt myself by answering truthfully(long shot if you ask me) versus how much will we all hurt Canadians with ‘US person’ status by denying our existence.
Sounds like filling the long form out truthfully is pretty safe. Now having your bank info sent to the IRS and dealing with the consequences – that takes guts!
US person: “Please Canadian government. You must help the one million Canadians deemed ‘US persons’ and their families in Canada, and save us from the big bad wolf. Gosh that works out to 10% of Canadians who are directly affected by US extraterritorial overreach!”
CDN gov’t: “Well, if there was really a million hurt by this(and their familes), maybe it would be worth our while. But we did a head count recently. Apparently there are only 100,000 of you. Not enough voters to worry about. We’ll just keep on reporting those few Americans living in Canada to the IRS”
I know in another thread people were thinking I was bananas about the Census. I’m glad others articulated the reasoning behind it better than I could.
I too am worried about the Lockheed Martin link and the CRA link. For Lockheed Martin, I ordered the paper form and will have fun filling it out according to some of the suggestions on the Count Me Out. I want to be counted, and I want to comply, but I’ll make them put in a little extra effort for me. Maybe I’ll get my 5 year old mini-Brocker to help. She loves to write!
For the CRA, one of my friends working there confirmed that information sharing is a one way street – from the CRA to Stats Can. CRA gets nothing out of it.
Kinda like the IGA 😛
Stars Can is really, super draconian about information getting into the wrong hands – and as it shold be. I know that I have general free run of the Internet at my job and I would say that 95 % of sites are blocked for them. They can use the intranet and that’s about it.
Re: “Now having your bank info sent to the IRS and dealing with the consequences – that takes guts!”
IMO, for any non-compliant Canadian ‘US persons’ to do this, requires stupidity, not guts.
I worked on several projects when I was an employee of the Government of Canada, and on some of the projects I had to work with Statistics Canada and once with Census information. I also was interviewed for a fairly senior job at Stat Can a couple of decades ago; didn’t get the job, but I did have to prepare for it and learn about a lot of things including the law governing the Census and who has what access to it.
Northern Shrike is right. Stat Can and its employees legally cannot share individual census records with anyone outside Stat Can. or any information that would permit anyone to identify an individual person with that information, not another federal department or employee outside Stat Can, only employees of Stat Can (who have to sign I believe the Official Secrets Act and the Statistics Act) and basically only those working in the Census Bureau have any access to individual records. The secrecy oath is for life, not just for employment, and the penalties for violations of this are under the criminal code and are severe (though I forget now what they are specifically).
Stat Can did provide my project with data tabulations from the Census, but under what then (may still be called) The Rule of Ten, no cell in any such tabulation given to anyone in government or outside it, may be based on (usually a mean, sometimes a median) value for fewer than ten individual persons. Which makes it effectively impossible to ferret out a person from the tabulations. You can get reliable numbers at an aggregate or sub aggregate level down to ten cases, but never at the level of an individual data point or person. And there was (maybe still is, I hope) an internal committee that reviewed all data requests from outside Stat Can to ensure that there was no risk of compromising individual data points even at the level-of-ten-plus aggregation, before the data could be released.
Unless Parliament passes a law changing the above, and such a law survives court challenges (I can pretty much guarantee there would be challenges if that happened), don’t get worried about this.
Stat Can is ruthless on these issues, because if they weren’t, no one would trust their census or other data collection, and the numbers they have and that governments and businesses need, wouldn’t be worth the paper their printed on. They know this, and they know they’d be out of business in no time if they didn’t hold to that privacy guarantee.
What I meant was (in case not clear), to reveal your birth place to the nice lady at the bank, knowing you are the subject of the FATCA US person hunt, is a stupid, not gutsy move.
LOL. I know cause I did it once out of anger.
Canada’s U.S. persons census data will rival the U.S. “Name-and-shame” data for (un)reliability… for exactly the same reasons.
Behind each there is a strong motive (I didn’t say justification) to lie.
Apparently, without “standing” there are no victims – future or present.
ADCS will consider both stupid and gutsy victims, I’m sure.
@Shovel, yes sadly we will not likely ever know how many Canadians have red, white and blue tattoos on their asses. Some unknown multiple of whatever the next publicized official number is.
BB, I have no idea what you are talking about. Was not trying to get your panties into a knot.
Or maybe I was subconsciously. Who knows. Have a great day BB!
@NorthernShrike
@Schubert1975
Thank you to both of you for your reassuring words, based on your personal and professional experiences with Stats Can. Being from Ottawa myself, I was aware of the severe penalties for Stats Can employees who break their strict privacy rules.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t that long ago that similar penalties would have applied to either Canadian bank or CRA employees if they dared to send an individual’s bank records to a foreign government. We’ve already slid a long way down a slippery slope of disclosure since then, so I believe it is wise to remain vigilant to any further erosion of privacy firewalls between government departments or agencies.
In the meantime, I’ll just go ahead and fill-out the forms truthfully. I agree with GwEvil and WhiteKat that it’s better to hold one’s head up and take a stand. We have done nothing wrong, and should not be afraid to be who we are.