Greetings all. On Tuesday 8 October Senator Lorna Milne presented to the Senate petitions containing 940 signatures seeking to regain public access to Historic Census records. In presenting these petitions she made the following statement: ============================== Hon. Lorna Milne: Honourable senators, once again, I have the honour to present petitions. This time these petitions bear the signatures of 940 Canadians in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, who are researching their ancestry and who are petitioning the following: Your petitioners call upon Parliament to take whatever steps necessary to retroactively amend the confidentiality privacy clauses of statistics acts since 1906, to allow release to the public, after a reasonable period of time, of post-1901 census reports starting with the 1906 census. I have now presented petitions with 19,169 signatures to the First Session of the 37th Parliament, petitions with over 6,000 signatures to the 36th Parliament, and petitions with 940 signatures to the Second Session of the 37th Parliament. All of these petitions call for immediate action on this very important matter of Canadian history. ============================== Our efforts are not yet over. We still have a need for further signatures on petitions and letters to our elected and appointed representatives. We ask at this time that letters seeking support be restricted to your own MPs and Senators. Please check the Scoreboards at the Post 1901 Census Project website (at the URL following my signature) for the position of your MP or Senator BEFORE writing to them to ensure your letter reflects their position. As usual, I would appreciate receiving copies of any responses you might receive, particularly if they differ from the position shown on the Scoreboards, so that I might keep the Scoreboards up to date. Even though on 3 October 2002 Liberal House Leader, the Hon. Don Boudria, announced to the Ottawa Press Club that the government's fall legislative agenda would include legislation to deal with the concerns of those seeking to regain public access to Historic Census records, it remains to be seen if that legislation will truly meet our concerns and expectations. It has been made abundantly clear, on numerous occasions, that what we seek is exactly the same access to Census records after 1901 that we currently have for records up to and including 1901. 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.