(Alison Sandstrom/paNOW Staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

Finding future funding

City looking for ways to boost census participation

Mar 26, 2021 | 3:00 PM

Prince Albert city councillors and senior staff are looking for ways to encourage residents to fill out their census forms in an effort to boost the city’s official population. If they’re successful, it could have major impacts for the amount of federal and provincial money the city receives.

A report written by city manager Jim Toye shows a large gap between the number of people with health cards registered in Prince Albert and the number of people who registered in the last Statistics Canada Census. In 2016, Ehealth reported 45,568 people living in Prince Albert, meanwhile the 2016 census reported 35,926—a 27 per cent variance.

Various federal and provincial grants are based on census population. The next Census of Population is in May.

In the case of provincial Municipal Revenue Sharing, cities receive their annual allotments on a per capita basis. Based on the program’s 2020-2021 formula ($201.66 per capita), that means if the census increases by 2,000 people, P.A. would receive an additional $403,320 per year. If census numbers rose to match eHealth, the city would net an additional approximately $2 million through that program.

“Our population that’s showing in the census numbers, we don’t believe that’s the population that we really have in the city,” Toye told city council on Monday night. “We tried doing things in the last census [to increase participation] and those weren’t working.”

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This time around, Toye said the city is consulting with Statistics Canada on how to encourage residents to complete the census questionnaire. The city’s communications department is also working on a census communication plan, Toye’s report said. A community partner has been engaged to help with efforts in Ward 1 and the city is hoping to do the same in other areas as well.

“Our grants are based on these numbers. We want to make sure no head is not counted,” Toye said.

He explained one reason people give for not filling out their census is that they only live in Prince Albert part of the year.

“We have a very moving population,” he said. “What we did hear at the door is they can only be counted once…those are difficult decisions to make, but it’s not up to us, we try to get the correct address so we can count them in, but we have to be very careful how we handle those situations.”

A representative from Statistics Canada is set to give a presentation and answer questions from council in April.

In the meantime, on Monday night, councillors discussed various ideas to boost participation. Coun. Charlene Miller proposed putting communications about the census in city water bills and buying advertising with local media. Coun. Terra Lennox-Zepp suggested organizations, like the Community Service Centre, that receive city funding might be enlisted work with their clientele to complete census forms.

“We have these organizations that already exist and they rely on city funding so they might be highly motivated if we, as a city, were to work with them to assist their own clientele and people in our city,” she said. “Because that can improve the funding we can get as a whole to the city.”

Because the census of population is conducted every five years, the upcoming count in May will have major implications for P.A. up until 2026.

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom