The National Council of Women of Canada maintains that the information gathered in a voluntary census will compromise the reliability of the information collected and make the material unusable by other surveys. Almost all policy directed to family and community services is impacted by the data. Census questions are one way to keep attention focused. The removal of the question about unpaid work will have a negative impact on women, seniors, and children, through the potential to misdirect policy.
We have all heard a great deal about the sandwich generation, women who are between the elderly parent and the child.
Based on information from the 2008 census, two-thirds of Canada’s unpaid work is being performed by women. As pointed out by Kathleen Lahey, a law professor at Queens University, the unpaid work economy is being removed from the data collection. The elimination of these questions suggests that work that has been traditionally identified as women's work will not be measured. Ian McKinnon of the National Statistics Council, while admitting such questions are vague, concedes that the general social survey and other Statistics Canada surveys will be less valuable in the future because they will not establish a benchmark against the now-defunct mandatory long-form census.
Rather, the questions about unpaid work should be expanded. For example, making a distinction between housework and caregiving by referencing the aspect of work benefiting others, such that caregiving could mean that the caregiver may be foregoing other income to care for persons who cannot take care of themselves--