Health Unit backs return of mandatory long form census

Our Health Unit’s board wants the mandatory long form census to return. They’ve sent Prime Minister Harper a letter to show they mean it. In 2011, the feds got rid of the mandatory census, which had formed the foundation of Statistics Canada’s population information. Now less people are responding to the census because it’s voluntary and that’s not good when you want to gather statistics. Since the census doesn’t get as much feedback as it once did, the board says it’s hard to get solid stats for the communities they look after. In three Muskoka municipalities, they say the recent census data is unusable because of the low response rates.