RM of Moose Mountain says issues with census

June 29, 2026, 11:08 am
Donnie Matichuk

The RM of Moose Mountain has been facing problems with their census, similar to the issues covered in Manor, Carlyle, and Arcola.

“First we weren’t getting any censuses, and our administrator was getting calls asking about who was doing the census. We had found out that the lady that was originally doing it had quit, and that someone else had taken it over since then. The original person had a full-time job and wasn’t able to get all of her responsibilities done,” said Jack Wilson, RM councilor for Division 5.

He explained that a recent council meeting was where the issue of the census was first looked at.

“We recently had a council meeting to try and find out how many people in the RM were missing. We ended up hearing about all of the issues going on in Manor, Carlyle, and Arcola, and thought that we must be having the same issues.”

Wilson said that the biggest thing that will be effected by a lower population count is the RM’s economic future.

“Having a bunch of missing rural people is really going to affect how much money we’re able to get from government grants. We estimate that it’s around 200 people that haven’t gotten their census yet.”

Not only are rural residents of the RM of Moose Mountain not getting the census package, those who do still have had concerns about filling it out.

“We also found out that with the few people from the RM who did get their census, many of them looked at the questions that were being asked on it and didn’t want to answer them. I understand it, because they are pretty personal, but most of them just threw the census out.”

StatsCan has made a push in the last few years for the census to become fully online, but Wilson says that he has experience problems with the census there too.

“I filled out the census online, and I’m not the best with computers so I did it with my wife. We finished it and got the message that thanked us for completing it. A few days later we received a phone call asking why we hadn’t done our census yet. The online version of the census seems to have some issues as well.”

Wilson noted that while he didn’t receive a census package, the Census of Agriculture was much easier to deal with.

“We got the farm census as well, and that one was by mail, so we filled that one out and had zero issues. There doesn’t seem to be many problems with the farm one compared to the regular census.”

The Town of Carlyle and the RM have made a plan to figure out the problem together in the coming days and weeks.

“The council wanted to have a joint meeting with the Town of Carlyle to compare and come up with a plan for the future. I looked ahead and phoned the Spectator to see if we could get the word out about the census that way.”

Wilson shared a personal story of when the census was still done door-to-door by a volunteer.

“I’ve never done the job of being the census taker, but my brother-in-law did it years ago. He went door-to-door and sat down and did it with everyone, put all the information in, and then mailed it in. I know that they want to put everything online now, but what about the folks who don’t have a computer. I know a lot of rural people that don’t even have a cell phone, how are they supposed to do it?”

He said that the public meeting will hopefully have a date and time set soon.

“The town and RM have been in communication, and they’re hoping to hold that public joint meeting soon, but I don’t know any date for sure yet.”