Snapshot in (pandemic) time

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/04/2021 (1657 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Statistics Canada is hiring thousands of Manitobans in preparation for a census period that will shed light on how Canadians are living throughout a pandemic.

“We’re confident that we’ve got a plan that will work and achieve our response-rate target, which is at least 98 per cent, and we’ll do so safely,” Geoff Bowlby, Canada’s census manager, told the Free Press.

The agency is leaning on technology and locals to help get a sense of Canadians, their finances and lifestyles.

About 90 per cent of Canadian households will receive a letter on May 3, asking them to use an online code to access the census, or call to request a paper version. Some in rural zones will have a paid contractor drop off the letter.

Canadians will be asked to answer questions about their demographics and household makeup as of May 11, known as Census Day. People who don’t answer by then will get followup letters.

Bowlby expects only 10 per cent of people won’t fill out the census within a month, and those people will get a knock at the door from an enumerator.

This year, those paid staff will be strictly told not to enter residences. They’ll instead stay on the porch, and have masks and hand sanitizer.

Normally, Statistics Canada flies in enumerators to remote communities, but this year it plans to hire locals.

The agency will offer work to 32,000 enumerators from late April to July, about 3,000 of whom will work in northern and Indigenous communities.

In Manitoba, 1,300 people, including 350 in Winnipeg, will be hired.

The job normally pays $18 an hour, but in fly-in communities such as the Island Lake region in northern Manitoba, it will be $29 hourly, to accommodate for higher living costs.

The agency is recruiting through the website: census.gc.ca/jobs

For those in communal living situations, Statistics Canada will ask general questions to the head of personal care homes, and might do the same for hospitals, shelters, hotels and campgrounds.

“The census has to include everybody in the country, and that includes people who don’t live in private dwellings,” Bowlby said.

He’s confident that the trend of working from home will make 90 per cent of Canadians comfortable with filling out the census online, which 68.3 per cent did in the last census in 2016.

The census acts as a guide for social programs in Canada, making it vital for provinces with small populations, and minority communities, to ensure everyone’s counted.

Health transfer payments from the federal government to the provinces and territories are based on census population data, which occur every five years. Statistics Canada makes interim yearly estimates based on trends, but they all hinge on the actual census numbers.

The last census revealed everything from how many “boomerang kids” moved in with their parents due to a tough job market, to the condition of housing on remote reserves.

This year’s census will ask about how and where people worked in 2020, and about their current housing arrangement, which should shed light on how Canadians are faring in this pandemic.

The results will be released in phases, starting in February 2022.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca