Greetings All. It appears that I have been remiss in not updating all regarding what is happening with our legal action to obtain a 'writ of mandamus' to force Statistics Canada to transfer control of the 1906 Special Census of the Western Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) over to the National Archivist. While I have provided information regarding this in my last couple of columns for the Global Gazette, I have neglected to post it to the lists. Because of requests to do so, I provide that update to the lists now. The situation to date is as follows: On 8 February 2002, our lawyer in Calgary, Lois Sparling, processed an 'Application for a Judicial Review' with the Federal Court. Lois, and the other lawyers assisting her, felt that an Application for a Judicial Review would be a faster method of achieving our goal than the court action originally contemplated. The defendants served with this Application were Dr. Ivan Fellegi - Chief Statistician of Canada; George Radwanski - Privacy Commissioner; Ian Wilson - National Archivist; John Reid - Information Commissioner; and the Attorney General of Canada. All of the defendants have filed Notices of Appearance. While this Application named Ian Wilson and John Reid as defendants, it is known that both of them have supported public access to Historic Census Records. The Attorney General is named as a defendant in any actions against the Government or any of it's departments. The Application names eleven plaintiffs from various places in Canada. Those plaintiffs have all sworn Affidavits stating their reasons for seeking access to the 1906 Census records. and those Affidavits were presented during the last week of February 2002. The next thing to happen is for the defendants to submit their Affidavits. Lois advises that the Privacy Commissioner and the Information Commissioner each have their own lawyers while the Attorney General of Canada, the Chief Statistician and the National Archivist are all being represented by the Department of Justice. It is not known at this time how long this procedure will take, but we hope to have results in a matter of months, rather than the possible years that the alternate court action could have taken. While this Application refers only to the 1906 Census, it is expected that it will set the precedent for obtaining access to at least the 1911 and 1916 Census, and likely all subsequent Census as well. The reason only the 1906 Census is mentioned is that it is the only one that has passed the 92 year period after which it should have been released (in 1998). As I understand it, a writ of mandamus is good only for something that has already happened (or not happened) and cannot be used for future violations. It should be noted that this is a parallel action to our collection of signatures on petitions, and writing to our elected and appointed representative to seek support for access to these most important records. Petitions and letters are especially important at this time when Bill C-312 is expected to be debated in the House of Commons in early April, and Bill S-12 is currently receiving Third Reading in the Senate. All are encouraged to write their own MPs and Senator's if they have not already indicated their support for access. The Scoreboards on the Post 1901 Census Project Website (at the URL following my signature) are pretty well up to date with known positions of MPs and Senators. Please check the positions shown for your representatives, and if you have correspondence from them that shows a position for them different from that shown, forward that correspondence to me so that the Scoreboard might be updated. 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.