IIGS™ Newsletter - July 1998
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IIGS™ Newsletter - July 1998
A Call to Action on the Canadian Stats IssueThe following was written by Sandra Devlin and published Saturday June 13, 1998 in The Guardian, Charlottetown, PEI. Please participate.
Join the uprising of the great unwashed !! Join the uprising of the great unwashed !! Join the uprising of the great unwashed !! Join the uprising of the great unwashed !!
Historians and genealogists across Canada are cheesed off at the bureaucrats at Stats Can over their intention to hold back 1911 census information which normally would be made public after 92 years.
But this move is wider and deeper than whether family researchers will get to fill in a few more branches of their family tree through use of the information collected by census takers at the turn of the century.
It is further evidence of an alarming attitude: the federal government and its puppets deliberately holding back as much as they can, for as long as they can from the public.
That's not just my opinion.
Read what John Grace wrote just before he retired as Canada's Information Commissioner this spring:
"Too many public officials cling to the old proprietorial notion that they, and not the Access to Information Act, should determine what and when information should be dispensed to the unwashed public."
It's a privacy versus freedom of information tug of war. Too often freedom is losing.
Whenever the feds want to flex their muscle as the sanctimonious custodians of information and keep it from the hands of the great unwashed, they hide behind one privacy co-ordinator or another.
In the case of the 1911 census holdback it's Louise Desramaux, privacy co-ordinator at Statistics Canada. It is she who is answering the complaints being sent to the chief statisticians office.
The Stats Can privacy co-ordinator argues that the integrity of the national statistical system would be in jeopardy if that government agency betrayed its promise to the citizens "who have, over the years, demonstrated excellent co-operation in providing us with their personal information in the context of statistical surveys, particularly the census."
Back up there for a minute. "Co-operation?" I seem to recall that it is a federal offence if one fails to fill out a census form and mail it on the date specified.
So much for that useless bit of trivia.
Moving right along with some more bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, Desramaux defends the holdback as a legal decision and contends that 1906 provisions of the Statistics Act override the Privacy Act which allows for personal information from a census or survey to become public domain after 92 years.
"Consequently, Statistics Canada does not have the legal authority to transfer records from censuses conducted after 1906 to the National Archives for release to the public," Desramaux wrote to one of thousands of Canadians who have complained so far.
Furthermore, she adds, there are no exceptions in the legislation that would permit the disclosure of information from the census than can be related to individuals without their written consent.
Conveniently for Stats Can, most anyone over the age of 21 in 1911 is quite dead by now and, unless the physic network know something I don't, not likely to be writing letters.
Unfortunately for Stats Can, this is also the weakness of its argument unless someone can explain to me how a dead person's privacy can be invaded.
Under the law, as I understand it, a dead person can not be libeled or slandered.
For all-too-obvious reasons it is impossible to commit crimes against them.
One can't, for instance, murder a dead person. So how can their privacy be invaded?
In matters of civil dispute, my limited legal knowledge suggests that a next-of-kin could sign on behalf of the estate of dead relatives.
So, fellow unwashed, here's what we do.
Write two letters. The first being your written consent to release (after 92 years) information gathered about you in any census year you were alive (every 10 years - the last one was 1991).
The second one being a letter from you as a next-of-kin on behalf of any dead relatives (name as many as you can) polled in 1911 and subsequent census years --1921, 1931, etc. -- giving express permission to release the information.
Send copies of both letters to every government official and elected opposition member you can think of (but most importantly your own Member of Parliament and Prime Minister Jean Chretien).
Remember letters to elected officials in Ottawa require no postage.
Join the concerted effort of thousands from across Canada who intend to swamp Ottawa with letters from now until Canada Day.
Write now and write often.
Do it, not for historians or genealogists --even though that would be a good reason --but because freedom of information is vital in a democratic country.
And then, if you feel so inclined let me know you joined this important protest. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sandra Devlin is a Maritime-based freelance writer. In Other Words appears every Saturday in the Guardian. Sandra can be reached through e-mail at: devlin7@ibm.net or by regular post : 81 Weston St., Moncton, N.B., E1A 7B8.
This article has been re-printed with the permission of the author.
From the IIGS™ Queries Team:
_M_embers' _R_esearch _I_nterests A members' database for the following purposes:
Watch for announcement soon indicating availability to all members of IIGS™.
- To provide a benefit of membership in IIGS™
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- To mount members' e-mail addresses so that others may contact them
- To find where IIGS™ members reside around the world
- To assist members in advertising their genealogical web pages
- To index those surnames of -primary- interest in the members' individual research
- To announce the collective research interests of the members of IIGS™ in an alphabetized index
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