The chief statistician explained it well. Over the years, with changes in legislation, determining what the legislator's intent was became complicated, especially in the early 1900s.
Once an enumerator promised to keep the information confidential, it meant that the entity as a whole was required to maintain confidentiality.
Many years later, we find ourselves trying to figure it out. We were not there at the time. So it was decided that a mechanism, under the Privacy Act, would allow data to be made available after 92 years, without people's consent. In any case, the data was collected a long time ago.