Greetings All. I would like to add my comments to Muriel's recent posting relating to a NEW BEGINNING. I must agree that when writing to our elected representatives, no matter how angry we might be with their responses, or lack thereof, to our letters and email, we should use a degree of caution in the language we use to communicate further with them. It is possible to write strongly worded letters that get our points and frustration across, without being abusive. I suggest that is the route we should take. Calling MPs names or being otherwise abusive in our letters is likely to anger them and make them less responsive to our concerns than they might otherwise be. We could in fact turn someone around who tended to support us, even though they have not said so, and cause them to go in the other direction. There are many different ways of saying the same thing. Any message to your MP (or others) should state your purpose firmly, but also as fairly and eloquently as possible. Even though you may personally feel it warranted, due to any number of reasons, to insult someone in government from whom you hope to receive positive assistance in the Census issue may be folly. It could, in fact, weaken their resolve to be positively objective in their final assessment of this issue! Thanks to many thousands of Canadians, and others, who have written and emailed, and signed petitions, a tremendous amount of pressure has been brought to bear on the Government regarding this issue. With the upcoming federal election looming, voters concerns will be overlooked by MPs to their own peril! Common sense should dictate that information on censuses, taken 92 years before it is available to the public, will be primarily of interest only to those seeking their ancestry. In writing or sending email to our own Members of Parliament we should reasonably expect that we get some kind of response. Sending to MPs other than our own, we may or may not receive a response. I find it interesting that a number of MPs have acknowledged email from non-constituents by sending a notice requesting a mailing address, stating that they do not respond to people outside of their constituency. Quite frankly, I think it would be simpler to respond to the original email to begin with. As frustrating as it may be to us, we are unlikely to receive a definitive response to our questions from any Cabinet member, especially John Manley. I have no knowledge of this, but suppose that Mr. Manley completely supports our quest for access to Historic Census. If such were the case it is very unlikely that he would make that support known until he was prepared to submit a Bill on behalf of the government. If we hope that we have his support, should we then jeopardize it by calling him names or being otherwise abusive? This is not to say that we should not continue to write to our MPs seeking support for access to Historic Census, or to John Manley seeking release to the public of the Report of the Expert Panel on Access to Historic Census. We must continue to do so. We should, however, choose our phraseology to be firm, but polite, while getting our points across. I have, on occasion, been accused of using too many words. Can you believe that ??? <]:-) Happy Hunting. Gordon A. WATTS gordon_watts@telus.net Canada Census Committee Port Coquitlam, BC Keep up to date on Post 1901 Census information at http://www.globalgenealogy.com/census and http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Farm/7843/poll.html Download and circulate Post 1901 Census Petitions now from http://www.globalgenealogy.com/census/petition.htm