this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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The #2026Census has begun! Look for your census letter in the mail. Census data paint a portrait of Canadians and their stories – from small communities to entire provinces and territories. Complete your census today at census.gc.ca.

There’s still time! May 12th is Census day, but you can complete your questionnaire into July.

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[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That was a rather wasted census. Language and gender identity are important but so is understanding how we get around or how public services in general are utilized, shit it didn't have a race or cultural identity question.

[–] orioler25@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

And Canadians were about to vote in a party that as running on trans genocide. Why tf would any queer people be honest with the state?

[–] loonsun@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Did you get the short or long form?

[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Short I assume, but I wouldn't even qualify it as a short, to me the info it asked for was the pure basics any survey would ask me before asking me real questions.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 hours ago

How many times did it ask the same question. What a waste. I guess they really really wanted to know what languages you spoke.

[–] CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

yea, that's the basic short form census, same i got.

I used to be a census take for the government in my teens, and helped people do the long form. The questions you are asking for are all there, while the short form is much more of a basic population count.

[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I wish we were given the choice on which one to do. Considering it's mandatory to do the census it would show the government how much of the population actually gives a fuck

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 hours ago

No cause it would not be a true representation of the population.

[–] CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Came here to say the same as Charles, would love to self select for a long form... which means that people like you and I would be over-represented!

Quite a pickle.

[–] loonsun@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah you hit the problem on the head. Giving people the choice would break the survey methodology and invalidate the results. Random selection is the only way to ensure that respondents provide representative answers for the population.

[–] charles@lemmy.ca 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Unfortunately that would also skew the results quite a bit. We'd end up only having actual data on the types of people who volunteer for the long form.

I say this as someone who would gladly do the long form every time (only gotten that lucky once so far but it was a lovely experience).

Could still require some people to do long form and for the rest make which version optional.

[–] Avelle@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Got the short one, but was hoping for the long one. It took me like 5 minutes to complete.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

I was also sad that it was so short.

[–] No_Maines_Land@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm also sad about getting the short one. But at least we can have a laugh about it.

thebeaverton.com/2026/05/local-nerd-disappointed-he-didnt-get-the-long-form-census

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

I think they run that story every census. Except that time they took the long form away.

[–] NullPointerException@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They just wanted to know what language I speak at home…

[–] LostWon@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Same for us. I set aside time to do it yesterday and a few questions around that were all they asked!

[–] loonsun@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

That's the short form. Remember the census is primarily a population count, they don't need to ask everyone a bunch of questions to understand broad population trends.

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 12 points 1 day ago

It's your civic duty!

[–] ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Did mine this weekend.

[–] sudoMakeUser@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Pretty excited, I got the long form

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago

I got the short one. Would have liked the long form though. I love doing that kind of thing.

[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I think I did as well

[–] zeroConnection@programming.dev -1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Do people still trust giving their personal data to the government in the age of AI with constant data breaches?

Well, Palantir is gonna be happy.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 hours ago

I mean what's your choice? I mean you can go live in the Bush somewhere and die in a cave of an infection I guess. Not participate in society at all.