Meanwhile the 350,000 member Canadian Association of Retired People (CARP) polled its members on the census issue last week and got a response in favour of keeping the long-form questionnaire twice as big as they normally get in such surveys, said Vice President of Advocacy Susan Eng.
“They (the membership) is going crazy about it,” she said, adding CARP normally gets a response of about 2,500 to its surveys but on the census issue got more than 4,800 respondents.
In an open letter to Clement, Eng said Ottawa’s decision is unpopular across Canada and even unpopular among Conservative supporters. “CARP members polled overwhelmingly oppose the decision, do not accept the government’s claims, do not have privacy concerns with the census and claim the decision will affect their vote negatively for the government if this decision is not reversed.”
However. Abbott said the issue has been “misreported” by the national media. “The long-form will be coming out. Instead of coming out to 10 per cent of the households, it will be coming out to 30 per cent of the households. The difference will be that filling in the long-form will be voluntary as opposed to subject to a jail term.”
Critics of the federal government’s decision maintain if filling out of the long-form census questionnaire becomes totally voluntary, very few of the forms will be filled out.
Keywords: census
