Sharpen your pencils, here come the long forms
Kevin Wilson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (May 04/01) - Time to fill out those census forms, Yellowknifers.
Although Statistics Canada has already enumerated 13 of the most remote communities in the Northwest Territories for the national census, Yellowknife and the southern communities within the NWT will be counted along with the rest of the country on May 15.
More than 2,900 dwellings were reached across NWT in the 13 remote communities during the early enumeration, according to Tim Dancy, a communications officer for the 2001 census.
Dancy was in Yellowknife to remind people here that there's plenty of reasons to fill out your census forms.
"The main thing is for transfer payments from the federal government," said Dancy, pointing out that Ottawa transfers $12,500 to the GNWT for every person living here.
"For every person that doesn't fill out the form, that's $12,500 the government doesn't receive," said Dancy. "If you have 500 people who don't fill it out, that's six and a quarter million."
There's also the fact that filling out the census forms is the law. If you don't do the forms, you can be fined or even go to jail. Dancy added that filling out your census forms is cheaper in the long run, because it's costs more to have have enumerators visit your home over and over again.
"That ends up being a big savings to the taxpayer."
All Yellowknife residents are required to fill out the "long" census form, composed of 51 questions on everything from your age and sex to your annual income.
That's happening at the request of the territorial government.
"In the south, it's one in five households," that do the long survey, said David Stewart, of the NWT's Bureau of Statistics. The rest are asked only half a dozen questions.
Traditionally, every household in the NWT does the long one. That's because StatsCan doesn't include the territories in much of its other random sampling.
And that, said Stewart, makes the census, "one of the more important tools," for the territorial government.
StatsCan spent nearly $325,000 on the early enumeration. By the time NWT is fully counted, $655,000 will have been spent in the area.
