Neepawa's mayor is pleased to see the federal government has reinstated the long-form census, but he's still hoping to conduct their own counts in between the five year period. The 2011 census consisted of a mandatory short-form, as well as a longer, voluntary, questionnaire. The new federal government has reinstated the mandatory long-form, and Adrian de Groot says that provides vital information to municipalities.

"When you're doing applications for grants or long-term planning for age of populations and things like that, you need the hard data, the actual numbers and factual information. The only way you're going to get factual information about your population is through a census, a form of counting to provide information. I know the concern of the prior government was sensitive, private information and things like that. I think that can certainly be sorted out."

De Groot feels to create a more accurate funding application, the long-form must be taken into account alongside a more current count. Neepawa's been calling for the province to allow municipalities to conduct their own periodic censuses, in order to allow for more accurate funding.

"A lot of things change in five years. There are other jurisdictions that allow that. The reason they allow that is because municipalities and provincial governments use per-capita formulas for granting. You could have a situation where you're locked into an agreement on a per-capita basis, and you have substantial loss in a population for one reason or another, especially in a resource industry. That's what we had in the north. There was a big fluctuation between censuses and there's no way to adjust that. You're locked in for the next five years."

De Groot notes the censuses are vitally important, and says they'll be taking steps to ensure full participation. He notes they have many new Canadians in Neepawa, so they'll be reaching out to them and other groups to ensure everyone's aware of the importance of the survey.

"We've got a large influx of immigrant population, and we need to make sure they engage in that as well. Personally, I'm going to be talking to council about setting up a communications strategy, to engage some of the leadership in the community to illustrate how important it is to engage in the process."

The 2016 census begins on May 2nd.