Organized Jewry in Canada was informed by the Government today that Canadian Jews, like all others in the Dominion, will again be able to enroll themselves as “Canadian,” without indicating their ethnic origin, when the next census is conducted in this country in 1961.
In the 1951 census, Jews were permitted to register as “Canadians” as to ethnic origin, while putting themselves down, if they chose to do so, as “Jew” by religion. The same rules will prevail in the 1961 census, Dr. O. Lemicux, chief of the Government’s Census Branch here, today told a delegation representing the National Joint Public Relations Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith.
Jewish leaders point out that such double classification results in incorrect statistics. They note that, in the 1951 census, only 181, 670 persons declared themselves of Jewish ethnic origin, while 204, 836 said their religion was Jewish. The result, say the Jewish leaders, was that “the erroneous impression was given that 23,166 persons, or 13.5 percent of all Jews by religion in Canada in 1951, were not Jews by ethnic origin which was evidently incorrect.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
