Hi Tom. You have reiterated a number of points that many of us have been saying for quite a while now. Many of our Committee members have been at this for varying periods of time. I have personally been encouraging subscribers on various mail lists to contact their MPs for almost three years now. I originally found out about the problem re: Post 1901 Census from a posting of Lyn Winters on the GANS website. The main thrust of our campaign has been going now for a little over a year, with Canada wide petitions, and letter writing campaigns. I would like to think that we would have a resolution to our problems before the next election but there is no guarantee that this will happen. I am concerned that if we must continue after a new election we may be starting all over again with new people in the government positions that we must deal with. I would personally like to see a resolution prior to the next election so that I can get back to dealing with my genealogy which has been taking a back seat in favour of our campaign for some time now. We must be prepared to step up our campaign of writing MPs and Ministers shortly but until the report of the Expert Panel is brought down by the end of this month it is difficult to say what the wording of the letters and emails should be. I am optimistic that the report will come down in favour of allowing access to Historic Census records but again there is no guarantee of that. We now have two identical Bills before the two houses of Parliament -- Bill S-15 presented by Senator Lorna Milne in the Senate, and Bill C-484 presented by MP Murray Calder in the House of Commons. Assuming the Expert Panel recommends allowing access, my thoughts at the moment are that we should put together an entirely new petition urging the acceptance of these Bills as a Government Bill, citing the recommendations of the Expert Panel. If this were to happen the Bill would almost certainly be passed. As has been stated many times during our campaign, one of the most difficult things we have had to contend with has been trying to get the media to pay attention to us. Perhaps release of the report of the Expert Panel might cause the media to pay a little more attention to our letters to editors etc., at least for a little while. While we are still a ways from the finish line, I think that we can be proud of what our efforts so far have produced. We have got Industry Minister John Manley to ask Statistics Canada for possible options to address our concerns, we have had an Expert Panel appointed to study access to Historic Census records and to make recommendations, we have a Bill in the Senate, and two Bills and a Motion in the House of Commons. We have produced and had presented petitions containing many thousands of signatures. We have also made a great many people aware of the problem and we have a great deal of support for our campaign, not only in Canada, but in the US, England, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand, and most of the rest of the "western" nations of the world. Being proud of what we have so far accomplished does not mean we can now rest on our laurels. We must continue our efforts until we have reached our goal, all the time remembering that we may well be just at the beginning of what may be necessary. With the summer recess rapidly approaching, our MPs will be returning to their home constituency offices. This will provide many opportunities for face to face discussions regarding access to Census. I look forward to hearing the results of many of these discussions and will add those to the correspondence logs attached to the MPs Scoreboard. Happy Hunting. Gordon A. WATTS gordon_watts@telus.net Port Coquitlam, BC ICQ # 9183352 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 ----- Original Message ----- From: Thomas Lynch <lyncan@col.auracom.com> To: Gordon A. WATTS <gordon_watts@telus.net> Cc: Muriel M. Davidson <Farquhar@netcom.ca> Sent: Thursday, 08 June, 2000 5:36 AM Subject: Call To Arms? I too feel that the question of census release will be delayed until after Parliament recesses for the summer and is deferred until next session or after a possible election. If the latter, this gives us additional time and leverage to bring our MPs around to a positive-response frame of mind. A lot of sheep-like response was generated by the statements from StatsCan and the Privacy Commissioner, while excellent arguments such as the one from Gordon Watts were forced into being rebuttals to their comments.. first impressions are lasting and our two federal employees were quicker off the mark. With deferment clearly offing, we should now develop a strategy to maintain (and indeed accelerate) our momentum. Such telling points as have been established by others on this list should be printed up and presented to those 'on the fence' or in the negative camp. We must publicly educate the average voter in what is at stake here.. and the long-term inroads that will result in personal or collective freedoms if this bureaucratic nightmare is allowed to become law or policy. In other words, we must become a semi-professional lobby group, maintaining the pressure upon members and the government and keeping the subject in the public forum through the media. This is the long grind.. if Parliament recesses with this unresolved they will hope that the matter will be forgotten by the public at large and resolved as an internal policy matter, as has been the case in the past. The pressure upon all elected official must be maintained, while we educate our MPs and bend them to our wishes. If an election comes about, then one of our questions should just where the candidates stand on the question of release. If we get them on record enough times during an election, they will be sensitized to resolve this favorably when elected. After all is said and done, the results will depend upon us.. will this be another bite out of our democratic and social rights? He who howls longest and hardest is who gets listened to in the long run. These guys work for us, wallow at the trough at our forbearance, and supposedly reflect the wishes of the citizenry. Make it so! Tom Lynch in Truro, NS ----- Original Message ----- From: Gordon A. WATTS <gordon_watts@telus.net> To: <CANADA-CENSUS-CAMPAIGN-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: June 7, 2000 6:54 PM Subject: [CCC-L] Re: "Pairing"