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Originally Posted by Scorponok
How often do they do it, and why is it so important to them? What if you fill it out incorrectly? Can they jail you?
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It's done every five years and provides governments, businesses, and other organizations with very reliable and valuable demographic information. This information is used to track changes and patterns and make to projections and decisions for the future.... for everything from electoral boundaries to healthcare resourcing to building & land developments. You can view data from the 2001 census here:
http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/home/index.cfm
A side note -- four out of five families receive the (very) short questionaire which takes a minute or two to complete, while 20% of families receive a much longer form with 52 additional questions. The data from this longer form is much more valuable and interesting... it contains questions on daily activities, sociocultural information, education, employment, and income. These longer forms are randomly distributed and the 20% is a large enough sample size to make accurate projections about the entire country.