My apologies in advance for the length of this posting Greetings All Last Thursday I spent several hours in the Vancouver Public Library researching the Debates of the House of Commons for 1905 and 1906, and the Statutes of Canada for the same years. The main reason for my research was to find where this issue of privacy or secrecy had been debated in the House. I discovered a few interesting things. First of all, the Census and Statistics Act (Chapter 68) of 1906 turns out to be a revision of the Census and Statistics Act (Chapter 5) of 1905, (assented to 16 May 1905). I have just finished doing a clause by clause comparison of the two acts. What I found is that, while not 100 percent so, for the most part the clauses themselves are virtually word for word identical between the two acts. The major difference between the two was between Section 8 of 1905 and Section 12 of 1906. The difference here was that in 1905 the section referred to "the province of Manitoba, and..... the provisional districts of Alberta, Assiniboia, and Saskatchewan in the North-west Territories " and directed that a Census of population and agriculture be taken in the month of June 1906 and every tenth year thereafter. In 1906 the clause referred to "the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta" and directed a census be taken in the month of June 1916 and every tenth year thereafter. This reflected the fact that Alberta and Saskatchewan had become provinces and incorporated an amendment to the 1905 Act that had been assented to 20 July 1905 (Chapter 6 of 1905 Statutes). The other difference between the Acts of 1905 and 1906 was that where in the 1905 Act, one paragraph or section may have been used to express two or three points, the 1906 Act broke that paragraph in to two or three paragraphs and renumbered them. In some cases the clauses in the 1906 Act were rearranged and grouped differently than in the 1905 Act. This necessitated the renumbering of most of the clauses in the 1906 Act. Where the 1905 Act designated some sub-paragraphs by numbers i.e. (1)...(2)...(3) etc. the 1906 Act did it by lower case letters i.e. (a)...(b)...(c) etc. In spite of these changes it was obvious that the intent was the same between the two bills. It was interesting to note that while Chapter 5 and the amending Chapter 6 for the 1905 Act, and the Act in 1918 all included dates of assent, Chapter 68 of the 1906 Act had none. One other change I found interesting was that where in the 1905 Act a clause referred to "jail", the similar clause in the 1906 Act changed it to "goal" which is a more archaic term used mostly in England. In searching the Debates of the House of Commons for 1906 I was unable to find any reference to either Census or Statistics either in the volumes of debate themselves, or in the Analytical Index to the Debates. This leads me to believe that there was no such discussion in the House in 1906. 1905 however is a different story. The Analytical Index for 1905 gives five columns of references under Census and Statistics. These all refer to Bill 5 - an Act respecting the Census and Statistics presented by the Hon Sydney Fisher, Minister of Agriculture in 1905. I have been unable to find any mention of privacy, confidentiality, or secrecy in any of the references in this index. Unfortunately the volumes of the Debates to which the index refers are not available at the Vancouver library so at this point I am unable to read the actual debates.. There are five volumes of Debates for the first session of the 10th Parliament (1905) and the first three volumes at the VPL were destroyed in a flood. From the page numbers given in the Index I assume the debate of Bill 5 is contained in Volume 1. I have ordered volumes 1 through 3 through inter-library loan but it may take some time to receive them. I have photocopies of the Index references for this. The first session of the tenth Parliament of Canada opened 11 January 1905 and prorogued on 20 July 1905 with the expectation that the second session would begin during the month of August 1905 although in fact it did not start until 8 March 1906. There was no mention of the Census and Statistics Act in the second session, at least not up to the date of the Census in 1906. Having so far found no reference to privacy, secrecy or confidentiality in the sources available to me for Hansard, I had a brilliant (?) revelation. There was no such mention within the 1905 or 1906 Census and Statistics Acts. What they contained was a clause that stated: "The Minister shall make and prescribe all rules, regulations, instructions and forms which he deems requisite for the work and business of the office; and such forms, rules, regulations and instructions, and any such tables of rates of remuneration or allowance, as aforesaid, when assented to by the Governor in Council and published in The Canada Gazette, shall have the force of law." So far as I have determined, no Census act actually had a clause regarding "Secrecy" until the Statistics Act (Chapter 43) of 1918. The clause on which Statistics Canada bases their position of non-disclosure of identifiable information from Census is contained in the "Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators" proclamed by the Governor General in Council and published in the Canada Gazette of Monday 21 May 1906. This clause states: "26. Every officer or other person employed in any capacity on census work is required to keep inviolate the secrecy of the information gather by the enumerators and entered in the schedules or forms. An enumerator is not permitted to show his schedules to any other person, nor to make or keep a copy of them, nor to answer any question respecting their content, directly indirectly; and the same obligation of secrecy is imposed to commissioners and other officers or employees of the outside service, as well as upon every officer, clerk or other employee of the Census and Statisticsts Offices at Ottawa. The facts and statistics of the census may not be used except for statistical compilation, and positive assurance should be given on this point if a fear is entertained by any person that they may be used for taxation or any other object." Little wonder that we have been unable to find debate in Debates of the House of Commons regarding confidentiality or secrecy clauses in the 1905/1906 Census and Statistics Acts. As the Minister of Agriculture made the rules and regulations which were then Proclaimed by the Governor General acting with the advice of the Privy Council, there was no debate in the House of Commons. THE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE HAD NO OPPORTUNITY TO DEBATE THE ISSUE OF CONFIDENTIALITY OF IDENTIFIABLE CENSUS RECORDS -- IT WAS NOT A PART OF BILL 5 (1905) AND AS SUCH WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SUBJECT TO DEBATE AT THAT TIME. So far as I can see, this clause could have been solely the idea of one person - the Hon. Sydney Fisher, Minister of Agriculture in 1905. This thought brings up a few more questions which I will attempt to persue further this coming week. Do the Instructions to Enumerators for the Census of 1901 and earlier contain a similarly worded clause to that above? Are there records such as Hansard that cover the meetings of the Privy Council and/or Cabinet and how would they be accessed? If accessible would they be so in sufficient time to be of benefit for a presentation to the Expert Panel on release of Historical Census Records? Food for thought. Happy Hunting. This posting has been sent to the Canada Census Campaign, British Columbia, Census-Chat-L, Colchester, Lunen-Links-L, Ontario-L, PictouRoots, Roots-L, Watts-L, and Wiltshire-EMI-L mail lists. I give my consent to forward without notification. 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/index.htm and http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Farm/7843/poll.html Download and circulate Post 1901 Census Petiton now from http://www.globalgenealogy.com/census/petition.htm