Phrasing census questions concisely so they are accepted by the population is an art. As to the time required to complete it, you are quite right.
We have reviewed all the information gathered during our consultations. We have a framework for deciding on the content. This framework allows us to determine whether a given question is necessary in terms of legislation, programs or policies. Then we balance it all out. We do this continually. If additional questions are needed, we will add them to the questionnaire, but we will have to make a compromise.
This year in particular, we are trying to replace certain questions in the questionnaire with administrative data. You might know that we used tax data this time to replace a whole series of questions about income that used to be in the questionnaire. This allowed us to shorten it. By making greater use of administrative data when we can, we can be much more concise and open to adding new questions.