A comedian's excited breakdown of Canada's census long form, from Jean Talon's 1666 New France count to the 2015 Liberal restoration of mandatory completion. One in four households gets the long form, and you can face fines if you skip it.
Otis and I have been checking the mail every day this week with a level of anticipation that is embarrassing for a grown adult. I'm hovering near the front door. I've started making eye contact with the letter carrier. He seems uncomfortable. I don't care! The census is coming. The Canadian census starts next week, and I need to know if I got— say it with me, Canadians— the long form. Every 5 years, Statistics Canada divides this country into 2 groups: 1, the people who get the long form, and 2, suckers! The long form goes to 1 in 4 households at random, and it's detailed. Your education, your income, your ethnicity, your housing, your daily activities. I know that to Americans, especially these days, this might feel like government overreach, but to Canadians, it sort of feels like an honour. Like, "I got picked!" I can't explain this other than to remind you that our national sexual fetish is bureaucracy. And greased cantaloupe, but I covered that one in the other video. This is Canada's 24th national census. The first one happened in 1666, where Jean Talon, a kind of local governor from France, personally went door-to-door here in New France counting 3,215 people. Stats Canada claims that the census counted 7 butchers, 11 bakers, and 3 candlestick makers. I was unable to verify this claim, but I will tell you that my producer and I spent an embarrassing amount of time this week trying to fact-check that. In that census, men outnumbered women nearly 2 to 1. Talon reported this to King Louis, and shortly thereafter, about 900 young women sailed from France to settle here. The next census, 5 years later, showed 700 children born in a single year. In 1941, they split the census into a version and a long version, and it worked. At least until 2010, when the Conservative government scrapped the mandatory long form and replaced it with a voluntary survey. The stated reason was privacy, but the result was that the people least likely to fill out a voluntary form were the people the government most needed to count, which is either a catastrophic oversight or a very tidy outcome, depending on how charitable you're feeling. One of the Liberals' earliest acts after winning the 2015 election was restoring the mandatory long form. And by the way, you have to complete the census. It's the law, and you can get fined for not doing it. So complete your census, do it honestly, do it fully, and if you get the long form and you don't want it, call me. I will come to your house. I will bring a pen. Do not test me on this.
So you're gonna want to wash your cantaloupe. I like to do both sides.
Ten times Canada helped the U.S. with its wildfires, instead of whining about the smoke. 
