Now while I have other theories about the actual goal of this new law, I'll keep them to myself and instead leave you all to exercise your imaginations and speculate wildly.
This all seemed like a fantastic idea at the time, but the department tasked with the census, Statistics Canada, has epically failed on the follow-through, given our experience and those of our friends and neighbors that we have talked to.
We were all supposed to receive a paper survey in the mail, along with a secure access that allows one to complete the survey online. Why a secure access code? I have no idea.
Well, we received neither. Instead, we received a politely worded little reminder reminding us it was law to complete our survey.
Not wanting to spend the rest of my days incarcerated, I phoned the number provided to see what was up. I was told that yes, there had been a big screwup, and a secure access code would be arriving in the mail shortly, and would I mind completing the survey online? No problem.
Fast forward approximately three weeks, and still no access code, nor paper survey. One afternoon there was a knock at the door and lo and behold, it is some poor unfortunate soul from Statistics Canada. Once we were done pulling the dogs off him (they were happy to see him, honest), our names were recorded and we were handed a paper survey to fill out.
And then he was gone.
Gone, unfortunately, before I realized there was no magic code on the paper form he had left us with so I could dispense with the annoying paper and do our survey online. Not only that, but we didn't even get a return-addressed, postage-paid envelope in which to return our paper census survey.
This is shades of the recent correspondence we received from Canada Post regarding a change our rural address is undergoing for which we had to return a form. It did include a return-addressed envelope, but no postage (which, ironically, it did require). But I digress...
So a week later I still have not bothered to fill out our census form, waiting in (likely) vain in the midst of a rolling postal strike for a magic secure access code which may never come. Might be time to bite it and fire up the pen and pony up some dough for a stamp.
I tried calling one more time, however after being informed the wait to speak to an agent would exceed 10 minutes I decided I had better things to do with a beautiful afternoon.
My tax dollars hard at work.
Fantastic!
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The census folks just dumped off a pile of papers at the hostel and left notes on every door saying if you lived here you had to do it. I walked downstairs and filled it out in less than five minutes before handing it to the front desk folks who took care of it from there. Nifty.
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