>>>They were using the word 'nationality' to mean 'ethnicity' and 'Canadian' was not allowed. You'd have had to pick one. It was a stupid thing. I know that a lot of people wrote in 'Canadian' and the idea was so mocked everywhere that I dont' think anyone was ever charged over it.
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>>What are they trying to do, practice social stratification?
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>They were trying to get an idea of the ethnic makeup of the country. I think they had some concept that they needed to know about what sorts of programs they needed to serve the various ethnicities. The fact that somebody like me who's parents were both born in Canada wouldn't need translation services and various sorts of ethinic aids seemed not to have occurred to them. It was stupidity writ large.
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>I think it also had something to do with the quota systems. Aha! We have a .016% Zimbabwian ethnicity in Toronto. We better make sure that our police and fire services are also .016% Zimbabwian. And everybody else in the service sectors maybe should have to go on diversity training to find out how to deal with that .016% in case they ever meet such a person. I think that's the sort of nonsense they probably had in mind. Remember. Those people are bean counters, not real human beings.
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>I was very tempted to write in 'Tramalfadorian".

When I was in college there was a form you had to fill out at registration that included some demographic data. One question was ethnicity, multiple choice, with the last option being the ever-popular "Other -- please specify." I checked the box and wrote in Vulcan. A few weeks later I got a letter from the U asking me to re-do the questionnaire, correctly this time. It said this information is actually important for funding purposes. The classic part was the first sentence: "We know you are not Vulcan."