The City of St. Albert is gearing up for a municipal census this spring, the first such endeavour since 2018.
Censuses are surveys done by either municipalities or the federal government that look to collect demographic data about residents, such as how many people live in a dwelling, their ages, first languages, employment status, and more.
The city plans to start this year's census on May 6, and the data collection period will run until June 27 said city's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) and legislative projects coordinator, Janice Vollrath.
Like previous censuses, the city will be collecting data through online surveys, while also having staff go door-to-door. In-person data collection efforts will begin in late May, Vollrath said, to give residents the opportunity to complete the survey online before staff go door-to-door to collect information from those who didn't or can't fill out the survey online.
In order for residents to fill out the census survey online the city will mail unique access codes to each household that will allow residents to access and complete the survey.
Although the 2018 survey had a 99.2 per cent overall response rate, Vollrath said just 51.4 per cent of responses were completed online.
“The goal is to go way higher,” Vollrath said, adding that the higher the online response rate, the cheaper it is for the city to complete the project. The potential cost efficiencies are in the number of staff needed to go door-to-door. Vollrath said the city is hiring four temporary census supervisors, one quality assurance manager, and up to 40 enumerators — the folks who go door-to-door collecting data.
Vollrath also explained that although the questions the city plans to ask in the census this year haven't been finalized, residents should expect routine questions like how many people live in their house, how old they are, what type of jobs they have, and what their first language is.
A new question the city plans to ask this year, Vollrath said, is what mode of transportation residents primarily use.
“Why we're asking that? Well, maybe we need to make more bike paths,” she said, meaning that responses to the questions, combined with neighbourhood-based comparisons, might help the city determine if certain parts of the city need transportation network improvements or changes to better support how residents get around.
“It's all for services to find out where people are and what people are needing.”
Besides determining if infrastructure changes on a neighbourhood level might be needed, Vollrath said the city also uses census data to apply for grant funding from higher levels of government and track population growth to inform future planning and budgeting.
Since the Alberta government regulates how municipalities conduct censuses, Vollrath said the city will need to submit a report with the data to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs by Sept. 1, and it's expected the city will release the census results publicly before the end of the year.
Up until 2018 the city conducted a municipal census every two years, but near the end of 2019 council elected to postpone the 2020 census and hold a debate on how frequently the city conducts censuses moving forward.
The debate was postponed significantly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and early last year council decided to complete censuses every five years. The five year frequency was chosen because the federal government completes their national census every five years, which would allow St. Albert to complete its own census at the halfway point between federal censuses moving forward.
The last federal census occurred in 2021.
