In July, Conservative MP Maxime Bernier claimed that when he was industry minister during the last census in 2006, he received about 1,000 complaints a day during the census taking.

But documents obtained by CAUT through an access to information request submitted by Ken Rubin suggest that officials inside Industry Canada were surprised by his claim and “an internal survey of correspondence” showed it to be wildly wrong.

In July 18 email correspondence between Connie Graziadei, director general of Statistics Ca­nada’s human resources branch, and the deputy industry minister’s chief of staff Paul Halucha, they confirm the ministry only received “a standard 25–30 (complaints) a year” and that Statistics Canada received just 22 complaints over the “intrusiveness” of the 2006 short and long-form census.