Petitions from the Canada Census Committee containing signatures in excess of 6,000 were presented to the House of Commons, and petitions with close to 3,000 names were sent to the Senate. These petitions, and those from other sources, served their purpose and helped us to reach the point where we were close to having a government bill brought down. Unfortunately, the election was called before this happened.

Now more than ever, your support in letters and petitions is required to inform the new government that we are still here, and that we still seek public access to historic census records. We have a clean slate with the new government. Those who signed petitions that were sent to the old government are free once more to sign petitions to be sent to the new government.

Petitions downloadable from the Post-1901 Census Project Web site have been upgraded to Adobe Acrobat PDF files. This should eliminate printing problems experienced with the Word and WordPerfect files previously located there. There are petitions to both the House of Commons and the Senate of Canada, in both French and English, for residents of Canada to sign. There is also a non-resident petition of support for those living outside of Canada who have roots in Canada. The petition page has been totally revamped.

I urge all to download and circulate both petitions. Even though they are similarly worded, they are directed to different places and may may both be signed by the same people. If various genealogical and family history societies prefer to use petitions of their own wording rather than use ours, I urge them to start circulating those petitions now.

There are no deadlines for petitions of the Canada Census Committee. They will be sent in periodically when sufficient signatures have been collected to make it worthwhile.

Thank you all for your continuing interest and support.

Gordon A. Watts
gordon_watts@telus.net
Port Coquitlam, BC

Keep up to date on Post-1901 Census information GlobalGenealogy.com and at the GeoCities site.

Download and circulate Post-1901 Census Petitions now.

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