Greetings All. In previous posts I copied information regarding certain events that had taken place in regards to the ongoing Town Hall Meetings and Focus Groups relating to access of Historic Census records. I sent a complaint regarding those events to Statistics Canada who forwarded it to Environics for their response. Today I received a response from Environics. I am assured that references to the 'promise' and the presentation of the 'compromise solution' at these proceedings is not a matter of the belief of the moderator and his 'pushing' these items. Part of the mandate for these proceeding was to obtain opinions regarding the 'promise' and the 'compromise solution' or 'third option' and in so doing Environics is simply fulfilling their contract. They are most certainly obtaining opinions regarding them -- mostly negative. While there may still be some misunderstanding regarding what took place at a Focus Group where an individual was excluded from participation, presumably because of membership in a genealogy society, I am hopeful that this can be amicably resolved, and may be before you read this message. I am assured that there have indeed been "individuals who are, or have been, involved in genealogy in these sessions and that the discussion in these sessions have benefitted from their points of view." I am advised that while certain persons have been invited by Environics to participate in the meetings, they indicated that they are "interested in hearing from anyone, with any point of view, on this subject. We thought it would be beneficial to the process to hear from those involved in privacy issues and academic research, so we invited a number of people in these areas to attend these sessions to give us their point of view. We are interested in hearing the views of these people, but we are not asking them to take sides." They further indicated that they have not solicited participation from anyone as an 'opponent' of the release of the records in question. I am, for the most part, satisfied with their explanations. My apologies to the lists for the frequency of my posts lately, but there is a lot happening at the moment. Happy Hunting. Gordon A. Watts gordon_watts@telus.net Co-Chair, Canada Census Committee Port Coquitlam, BC http://globalgenealogy.com/Census en français http://globalgenealogy.com/Census/Index_f.htm Permission to forward without notice is granted.