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From: "Gordon A. Watts" <>
Subject: [ALBERTA] Post 1901 Census -- Response from Environics
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 23:59:12 -0800


Greetings All.

In previous posts I copied information regarding certain events that had
taken place in regards to the ongoing Town Hall Meetings and Focus
Groups relating to access of Historic Census records. I sent a
complaint regarding those events to Statistics Canada who forwarded it
to Environics for their response.

Today I received a response from Environics. I am assured that
references to the 'promise' and the presentation of the 'compromise
solution' at these proceedings is not a matter of the belief of the
moderator and his 'pushing' these items. Part of the mandate for these
proceeding was to obtain opinions regarding the 'promise' and the
'compromise solution' or 'third option' and in so doing Environics is
simply fulfilling their contract. They are most certainly obtaining
opinions regarding them -- mostly negative.

While there may still be some misunderstanding regarding what took place
at a Focus Group where an individual was excluded from participation,
presumably because of membership in a genealogy society, I am hopeful
that this can be amicably resolved, and may be before you read this
message. I am assured that there have indeed been "individuals who are,
or have been, involved in genealogy in these sessions and that the
discussion in these sessions have benefitted from their points of view."

I am advised that while certain persons have been invited by Environics
to participate in the meetings,
they indicated that they are "interested in hearing from anyone, with
any point of view, on this subject. We thought it would be beneficial to
the process to hear from those involved in privacy issues and academic
research, so we invited a number of people in these areas to attend
these sessions to give us their point of view. We are interested in
hearing the views of these people, but we are not asking them to take
sides."

They further indicated that they have not solicited participation from
anyone as an 'opponent' of the release of the records in question.

I am, for the most part, satisfied with their explanations.

My apologies to the lists for the frequency of my posts lately, but
there is a lot happening at the moment.
Happy Hunting.

Gordon A. Watts
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.

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