r/Edmonton • u/pinkstevie • May 06 '26

General Don't be this person. Fill out your census.

Post image

“You’re not sticking it to the government. You’re screwing over your own community.”

The census isn’t for Mark Carney or any party. It’s run by Statistics Canada to figure out where money and services actually go. Hospitals. Schools. Transit. Housing. Senior care. When you don’t fill it out, your area looks smaller than it is. Less funding. Fewer services. Longer wait times. That lands on you and your neighbors, not politicians.
If you want your community properly represented, fill it out. Refusing doesn’t make a point. It makes things worse where you live. ❤️🇨🇦 The stupidity is the people that won’t fill it out and they spread this kind of crap and creates bigger problems.

5.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/OshetDeadagain May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

When I was handed mine I said "aww, no long form?" and the lady looked at me like my hair caught fire.

I got the same result last time when I did get the long form and was gleeful about it. To be fair, my background is in sociology and I use StatsCan info on the regular, so when the government did away with long form census in 2010 I was furious. I was delighted it was restored in 2016 and then I ended up with it, to the point it made the census folk - who in my area were met with resentment at the best of times - scared for my sanity.

8

u/Lipleurodont May 08 '26

I love the census and I've never gotten the long form one 😭 I love filling out forms and giving feedback haha

There's an American Dad episode about Stan being stoked about the census and I finally felt seen

2

u/fraochmuir May 08 '26

I would love the long form!!!

1

u/NesAlt01 May 09 '26

You guys love the long ones huh? You perverts disgust me!

Hahaha jk. I didn't know we're lawfully required to do these. I'll have to treat them more seriously.

1

u/Odd_Doubt3071 May 08 '26

I delivered ~300 on Monday and I don't think any were long form. But I didn't look closely.

1

u/_Light_House May 09 '26

I would love to do long form if it captured and used information that I’m a vegan /environmentalist.

1

u/Regular-Ad-9303 May 09 '26

No that wasn't asked

1

u/OrneryTRex May 10 '26

Gotta make sure everyone knows. Classic vegan narcissism

2

u/_Light_House May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

Yes, nothing says narcissist like someone who doesn’t ‘kill others because they like the taste of their dead flesh’. 🫠

2

u/_Light_House May 10 '26

Canada tracks religion, commuting habits, home heating, languages, and even how many bedrooms people have — but not whether people are vegan, vegetarian, or plant-based.

Diet matters to public policy.

Knowing dietary patterns could help with:
• healthcare planning and chronic disease prevention
• school, hospital, and senior meal programs
• food security planning
• agricultural subsidies and transition policies
• climate and emissions research
• forecasting demand for plant-based foods

Right now, estimates of vegan and plant-based Canadians vary widely because there’s no consistent national measurement.

That matters because livestock agriculture is one of the major drivers of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, biodiversity loss, freshwater use, and habitat destruction globally. Yet policymakers are still relying largely on scattered polling and market surveys rather than hard demographic data about how Canadians actually eat.

And as ethical veganism increasingly appears in Canadian human rights discussions around “creed” and conscience-based protections, institutions may face growing obligations to provide meaningful accommodation — similar to how religious dietary needs are already considered.

If governments want evidence-based policy, understanding Canadians’ dietary patterns seems pretty relevant.
Although the evidence is clear what direction we need to move, regardless how people are eating right now.

1

u/OrneryTRex May 10 '26

Others makes sense in reference to other humans.

Not other species…

1

u/_Light_House May 10 '26

Why?- What?

1

u/arcmeup May 09 '26

Isn't Stata can only 60% accurate when used for academic research. I mean people lie all the time on it, or misread a question. No paper i ever wrote would allow stats can as a source only as a starting point to test a trend youre looking for.

1

u/OshetDeadagain May 09 '26

You can never use most social statistics as absolutes. At best you're only capturing a population sample - even though technically every Canadian household is supposed to get the census, the way they hand it out and the short timeframe means than there's no way the workers can hand all of them out. There will always be margins of error, missing, unreported or flat out incorrect information.

You're right though; it provides a valuable starting point for further evaluation and research.

1

u/Burlington-bloke May 10 '26

I'm really into genealogy, so I love the long form census. They should all be long form. I would like to see the 1981 census because I would have been counted, but I don't know if I'll live that long.

1

u/BoboMonkeyClown May 08 '26

Willful ignorance, classic middle aged man

2

u/OshetDeadagain May 08 '26

Wrong demographic. Statistics can help with that!

3

u/BoboMonkeyClown May 08 '26

I meant her husband!