Mr. Census is displeased.
Doug Norris was director general of social and demographic statistics until 2005 — earning the nickname “Mr. Census” — and following his 30-year career atStatistics Canada, he became chief demographer and senior vice-president at Environics Analytics…
He believes privacy concerns around the census are overblown and says the minor hassle of asking one in five households to take 45 minutes to fill out the long form is a fair exchange for gleaning information crucial to Canadian society and the huge range of programs, businesses and non-profits that rely on it. “Moving into a knowledge-based economy, it’s hard to imagine why people don’t value that knowledge and that information much more, and doing away with it at a time when we’re going to need it more than ever is really puzzling to me,” he says.