Poor public support sinks Tofield census effort: Town has to stick with possibly flawed federal numbers now, costing taxpayers

Betting on a low federal census result and hoping its own municipal census would return better and more accurate numbers, Tofield Town Council received lethargic participation from its residents and it ended in a waste of money and even lower numbers.

“Needless to say, we are very disappointed with the response,” said Tofield Assistant CAO Jeff Edwards, stating the results were even poorer than the federal census which stated Tofield had a drop in population of 101 residents to 2080 from numbers recorded five years earlier.

Due to the amount of new housing and construction in the municipality and the previous growth trends, Council did not believe the population dropped.

Back in May, Mayor Harold Conquest pleaded with residents to help the town out and themselves by completing the four question census.

Tofield hired enumerators to go door to door and each residence had options to talk to the enumerator briefly and fill out the survey, or fill it out and leave it on the door handle to be picked up… for more see the July 11/17 Mercury