Human Resources Committee on Nov. 18th, 2010

[The Chair (Ms. Candice Hoeppner (Portage—Lisgar, CPC)), Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Good morning, everyone. I would like to call to order meeting number 33 of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Today, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we will study the impact of cancelling the long-form census.

We are very pleased to have several groups represented here today. We have Canada Without Poverty, we have the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, and we have the National Council of Women of Canada.

What I would ask is that each group take seven minutes per group to give us a presentation, and if you could just introduce yourself at the beginning of your presentation, that would be terrific. Also, if you just keep a bit of an eye on me, I will give you a sign when you're down to one minute for your time. We do try to really stick with the time limits because we have a lot of questions that we like to ask.

So we will begin with, I think right here on this side, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. If you would, please introduce yourself, and you have seven minutes for a presentation. Thank you.

[Aden Murphy, Chair, Canadian Alliance of Student Associations]

Thank you, Ms. Chair.

My name is Aden Murphy, and I'm the chairperson of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations and a student at the University of Alberta. I'm here with Spencer Keys, the CASA government relations officer, also based here in Ottawa.

The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, or CASA, represents 320,000 students in 26 universities, colleges, and technical institutes all across Canada. We are here today to continue our opposition to scrapping the mandatory long form and talk about how this deepens the problem of effective information of learning in Canada.

In addition to federal advocacy, such as the lobby days that have been occurring on the Hill all the past week, we also conduct policy analysis and primary research. CASA conducted a research survey of 21,000 undergraduate students of our member institutions to get an accurate reading of issues relating to student debt, work habits, and literacy about student financial aid, and at a great cost to our organization.

This survey would have been impossible if we did not have a reliable benchmark against which to measure our sample. This was not an opinion survey but a professionally designed research survey built to withstand academic scrutiny, and it's already being used to help student financial aid administrators and civil servants consider areas of improvement in student financial assistance.

The mandatory census is the only statistically reliable means of weighting voluntary surveys, like the one done by CASA. The long-form census provides invaluable information on critical topics, including post-secondary attendance and completion rates; awarded certificates, degrees, and diplomas; as well as interprovincial, interterritorial, and international flows of skilled personnel. One example of how the census is being used is that it benchmarks the enrolment projections that the governments, like Alberta's, use to plan long-term enrolment growth at institutions.

The reliability of the mandatory long form is essential to planning that framework, which, for example, sees the growth of nearly 500 students at the University of Lethbridge over the course of the next decade. Inaccurate data could easily lead the province to underestimating enrolment growth and cause a gap between the number of seats and the number of qualified students from southern Alberta able to attend that institution. This is one important example of where adequate, accurate data helps post-secondary education.

Canada already suffers from a lack of adequate, comparable data on our post-secondary system, and further cutbacks in the size and scope of learning data collected by federal ministries and departments is being contemplated. While planned long ago to end this year, it is very regrettable that the youth in transition survey is finished, and that the national graduates survey is only guaranteed for 2010-11.

Learning data has always been a problem in Canada. In stark contrast to the vast majority of industrialized nations, Canada does not have a centrally audited and comparable source of nationally collected data available to help evaluate the quality of higher education. In fact, in 2007 Canada ranked last among 40 OECD nations when it comes to the amount of post-secondary education information provided to Education at a Glance, an annual international survey comparing a wide range of indicators.

Our current learning infrastructure is highly fragmented and spread over multiple departments and institutions. This has resulted in the needless duplication of research and has prevented the establishment of efficient networks of data collaboration and the sharing of best practices, even though Statistics Canada is required by law to coordinate these activities.

Those departments and institutions that do collect and analyze learning information are not resourced to conduct the number and type of studies, both long-term and short-term, needed to address key questions about the major transitions throughout the lives of our citizens, starting data collection when a student enters grade school, rather than at 15, like the current youth in transition survey does.

Suffice it to say, the dearth of effective educational statistics at the government level means that the private sector has had to respond. Contributions like CASA's survey have had to fill the void, but those efforts are rendered much less effective without a mandatory census.

Our students are deeply concerned that this change will seriously impede the capacity of all interested parties to conduct comprehensive and timely analysis into higher education issues.

The mandatory long form must be brought back for the 2011 census. If issues around coercion are truly a concern, rather than changing the essential nature of the census, we prefer that public consultations be held to review the punishments given for failure to send back a census long form.

I'd like to thank you for your time. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to Canada Without Poverty.

[Rob Rainer, Executive Director, Canada Without Poverty]

Good morning. My name is Rob Rainer. I am the executive director of Canada Without Poverty.

Madam Chair, I have seven copies of speaking notes, if someone would like to pass those out to committee members.

I have just a few words about the organization. It's a registered charity, founded in 1971 as the National Anti-Poverty Organization, and is governed by a board of directors whose members have the lived experience of poverty.

Our mission is to eradicate poverty in Canada by promoting income and social security for all Canadians and by promoting poverty eradication as a human rights obligation.

We focus on the upstream end of the problem--public policy and legislation--as it impacts poverty outcomes.

I just want to take a moment to commend the committee for its seminal report, released yesterday, which we will be speaking about in a press conference on the Hill with some partners.

Our core constituency is people living in poverty, those on the margins of society due to social and economic conditions. This constituency is about four million to five million people in Canada at present.

As committee members who have been studying this issue, you know that there are certain demographic groups that are considerably disproportionately vulnerable to poverty: persons with disabilities; aboriginal people; persons of colour; recent immigrants; single parents with young children; single working-age adults from their mid-40s to age 64; increasingly, working-age adults who are working but are the working poor; and sometimes, and often overlooked, injured workers.

Our central concern, which is obviously shared by many organizations, is that the voluntary national household survey will result in the underrepresentation of people of low income generally and of people within high-risk demographic groups particularly, within the baseline population data that is meant to be derived from the long-form census, from which the bulk of census information is acquired.

I want to quote from the Statistics Canada website from yesterday. It is a standard text they have on the census of the population, which reminds us of what this census is really all about. It says that the census:

...is a reliable basis for the estimation of the population of the provinces, territories and local municipal areas. The information collected is related to more than 80 federal and provincial legislative measures and provides a basis for the distribution of federal transfer payments. The census also provides information about the characteristics of the population and its housing within small geographic areas and for small population groups to support planning, administration, policy development and evaluation activities of governments at all levels, as well as data users in the private sector.

That alone, I think, is testimony to the value of a mandatory census.

Statistics Canada, also on their website, indicates how they go about preparing the census. There are five key steps.

The first is to consult with data end-users to assess their socio-economic data needs.

Second is evaluating how those needs can be met either through a content change to the census or through other Statistics Canada data sources.

Then comes an extensive content testing program to determine the quality of information that would result from changes made to the questions and the questionnaire design.

The fourth step, which I didn't realize, is that cabinet actually reviews the options developed by Statistics Can for the content of the census.

Finally, the Governor in Council issues an order in council prescribing the questions for the census.

It seems to me that there are already a lot of checks and balances within that process to ensure high-quality and appropriate questions and so forth.

We're not data end-users in the sense that we don't mine Statistics Canada data ourselves. We don't have the capacity for that. We rely on others, experienced researchers, to do the data analysis. We also trust that those who have the expertise in the science-based collection of statistical population data are correct when they say that a voluntary survey is no substitute for a census.

I'm sure that you're all aware of the study Statistics Canada published in June. It was an internal study that was acquired under access to information. It examined how certain trends from 2001 to 2006 would have been portrayed had the long-form census in 2006 been replaced with a voluntary survey.

I want to quote from the conclusion of this report:

If the 2B census

--in other words, the long-form census--

questionnaire had been a voluntary survey in 2006, the picture of the population of Canada that would have emerged seems to be different for sub groups of the population based on citizenship, visible minority, language, and education.... [T]rends for some variables from 2001 to 2006 would have actually reversed; for others, increases would have been reduced or declines exaggerated.... The main message of these conclusions is that it is important to have proper methods to minimize the non-response bias and to ensure good response rates.

I will emphasize the final line from this report:

Comparisons of estimates of a voluntary survey with the previous census may be difficult.

As you know, hundreds of groups and many prominent Canadians have registered their opposition to the decision to terminate the long-form census, and only a very small number of groups have registered their support.

We at Canada Without Poverty agree that the threat of jail time should be removed from the census. An appropriate financial penalty for non-compliance seems reasonable.

Given the lengths taken by Statistics Canada to protect privacy of information, we strongly disagree with the notion that the long-form census represents an oppressive intrusion on privacy and thus should be replaced by a voluntary survey. If such a notion is true, the government cannot logically defend the continuation of the mandatory short-form census, which also contains questions of a primarily private nature--questions I would not feel obliged to answer should a stranger or private interest come to my door.

In conclusion, completing the census should be, and should be seen to be, an obligation of citizenship comparable to paying one's fair share of taxes, obeying just laws, voting, etc. Rather than characterizing the census as an oppressive intrusion into privacy, the federal government should be framing census participation as a critical means for citizens to contribute to the data analysis that underpins a wide range of programs and services intended to benefit them.

To foster this framing in the distribution of the long-form census, the government could include some great examples of how the statistically sound data derived from the census feeds forward into program and service design, right down to the neighbourhood and individual levels. In other words, help citizens connect the dots between what may appear to be random questions and the quality of life we are collectively striving to build for all Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you very much, sir.

We will now go to the National Council of Women of Canada.

[Monica Cullum, Vice-President, National Council of Women of Canada]

My name is Monica Cullum. I'm vice-president of justice for the National Council of Women. I am joined here by my colleague, Rashmi Bhat. We will share the presentation.

The National Council of Women of Canada was founded in 1893 and is one of the oldest women's organizations in Canada. Fifteen hundred women came together in Toronto to establish an organization with a mandate to improve the quality of life of Canadians through education and advocacy. The organization now comprises 17 local councils, six provincial councils, and 21 nationally organized societies representing women. All levels of the council bring together women’s organizations in an umbrella structure, along with individual members. The National Council of Women is a self-funded organization.

Historically, members have been encouraged to participate and take leadership in social action initiatives in their communities and in national debates on issues of concern. Part of that proud heritage is demonstrated by the work of Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, and Henrietta Muir Edwards, all members of the National Council of Women, now identified with Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby as “the famous five”.

The National Council of Women is affiliated with the International Council of Women and holds consultative status with ECOSOC, enabling NCWC to bring a Canadian perspective to the work of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. NCWC also participates as an observer, non-governmental organization with the permanent council of the Organization of American States. All levels of the organization are closely connected with issues and have a firm grasp of international issues and Canadian perspectives.

All policy for NCWC is generated through a resolution originating with either local councils or NCWC committees. These are adopted through a democratic process at the annual general meeting held each year in late May; thus representatives speak from the united voice of the federated membership.

In its 117-year history, NCWC has spoken out on many issues concerning Canadians. Some examples in the wide-ranging policy of the organization are: the support for hiring of women into the RCMP; building safety standards as they concern handicapped people; official recognition of the homemaker in Canada; the rights of status Indian women; elimination of the firearms registry; safeguarding of Canada’s Arctic sovereignty; land mines; the environment and nuclear energy/waste disposal; and trafficking and child prostitution.

I'll now turn the mike over to my colleague, Rashmi Bhat.

[Rashmi Bhat, Vice-President, National Council of Women of Canada]

I'm Rashmi Bhat, vice-president of public affairs for the National Council of Women of Canada.

We're here specifically to speak to the elimination of the long-form census as a mandatory requirement of citizens. The National Council of Women of Canada was disappointed in the decision of the Government of Canada to eliminate the long-form census as a mandatory requirement of citizens, and to changes that particularly apply to the removal of questions related to unpaid work.

Since 1973, it has been our policy to support the recognition of the contribution of unpaid work to a vibrant economy and to society, as cited in the following resolutions:

RESOLVED, That the National Council of Women of Canada request the Government of Canada to seek ways and means of officially recognizing the contribution to the Canadian economy and to Canadian society of the homemaker or family home manager; and further that such classification be included in the Canadian Dictionary of Occupational Titles or whatever other appropriate publication is indicated and be used for the purpose of classification in the Census.

This was adopted in 1973.

RESOLVED, That the National Council of Women request the Government of Canada to give serious consideration to the wording of the questions in the Census to prevent any suggestion of discrimination to any peoples in Canada.

That was adopted in 1974.

RESOLVED, That the National Council of Women of Canada request the Government of Canada immediately to institute household surveys of a substantial size and complexity in order to establish the economic value of housework and volunteer community service for the purpose of inclusion in the Canadian Classification and Dictionary of Occupations;

Adopted, again, in 1974.

RESOLVED that the National Council of Women of Canada request an occupational listing of unpaid caregiver/home manager/homemaker in the NOC/SDOC Dictionaries and further

That the National Council of Women of Canada call upon Statistics Canada in the next census to include

questions on unpaid volunteer work

questions on care of the disabled

expand the number of hours of eldercare be reported in the census question

continue to collect statistics on all unpaid work

develop and provide information on time use surveys

This was adopted in 1996.

It should also be noted that Canada made commitments at the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing and previous world conferences on women, specifically to the question that has now been eliminated from the long-form census for 2011.

[Monica Cullum]

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--

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Excuse me, Ms. Cullum. Could you wrap up your presentation, please?

[Monica Cullum]

Yes.

The National Council of Women of Canada urges this committee to, one, take immediate steps to support the reinstatement of the mandatory long-form census, including the questions around unpaid work, and two, investigate ways to expand and to make these questions more relevant so as to increase the reliability of the data.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you very much.

We will begin our first round of questions. We'll have a five-minute round. For witnesses, that means for questions and answers each member will have five minutes.

Again, you may not each be able to answer the question. If you don't mind, please keep an eye on me and I'll let you know where we are on the time.

We'll begin with the Liberals. Mr. Savage, please.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming today, the National Council of Women; CASA, which has been busy on the Hill this week meeting with people from all parties on student issues; and Rob, for doing the great work he does.

Rob, as you know, we tabled yesterday our committee report on poverty, a report in which you played a big part. So we thank you for that.

We brought this motion forward to have a bit of a study on the implications of the long-form census no longer being mandatory. The specific purpose of this committee is to have a look at the impacts of this on those who are the least advantaged in society: the poor. They quite often tend to be people with disabilities. Quite often they are women who are in unpaid or low-paid work.

It's an important topic, because as all three of you have indicated, this is going to have ramifications for years to come for the services the government is going to be able to provide and the information government will have in providing that service.

On education, for example, you referred to the YIT survey, youth in transition, but we've also had the cancellation in recent years of both the Canadian Council on Learning and the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, both of which did significant amounts of research on education issues.

As you said, Canada doesn't have very good surveillance of education information versus other countries. The main information sources we have are now gone.

On the disability side, the disability community lost the PAL survey, a particularly important survey for many people in the disability community, and it hasn't yet been replaced.

So it is important for people to understand that on the long-form census, the Governor of the Bank of Canada has a point of view, as does the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. All have a point of view on this. In fact, one of the most telling articles all summer was an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail that listed the three lonely organizations that support the government's decision against the churches, the business organizations, the social agencies, the provinces, the cities, the communities, and the distinguished Canadians who have decried this decision.

Canadians didn't understand it, and they thought it was just policy. Then we found out that in fact the government knew that information would be lost. In fact, The Globe and Mail cited at the end of September an internal order from Statistics Canada that states: “It is recognized that the quality of the data collected by the voluntary [survey] will be lower than that of a mandatory survey”. It goes on to say that some survey data “will not be useable for a range of objectives for which the census information would be needed”.

The government knew what they were doing with the cancellation of the long-form census, and it follows a pattern. That is the concern. This is going to hurt people who are already the most marginalized in Canada.

My question is for Rob.

We agree with you, obviously, that there shouldn't be jail time for people who don't fill out the census. We've said that from the beginning. That's been a false argument the government has used. I'd like you, if you could, to give me a specific example of Canadians who will be hurt by this decision if it goes forward, as apparently it will.

[Rob Rainer]

Thanks, Mike.

I was just reviewing this internal Statistics Canada report, which is really interesting. Have committee members seen this document?

Maybe I can get a copy to the clerk or someone. It should be distributed to all committee members, because this is right from within Statistics Canada itself in the summer, when it was doing an internal study of the impact of moving to a voluntary survey. They simulated having a voluntary survey in 2006 and how the data would differ. There is a whole bunch of changes; there are reversals in trends and there are exaggerations.

Oftentimes we are talking about small percentage points, but if those magnify over millions of people, you are talking about tens to hundreds of thousands of people who will effectively not be counted through the mandatory census. As an example, we all know that recent immigrants are a critical population for us to get information on, because the country is rapidly changing. Our demographics are rapidly changing and there are services and programs that need to be targeted to recent immigrants, who are very vulnerable, as the committee knows, to falling into poverty and remaining there. In this simulation that Statistics Canada ran, the actual trend from 2001 to 2006 showed a slight increase in the number of recent immigrants. It was up by 0.15%. When they did the simulation with the voluntary survey, it decreased by 2%. It doesn't sound like much, but when we are talking of hundreds of thousands or millions of people, you are effectively screening out a lot of people from actually being counted through a survey.

Renters is the largest one I see in this report. The actual trend in the number of renters is a decrease of 3%. When Statistics Canada ran the simulation, the number decreased by 8%. That is a 5% difference. So if you are planning for rental housing in a community and you're under-counting the number of renters by 5% or so, that is a significant number of people who will be affected.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rainer.

We'll go to Mr. Lessard, please.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you for being here this morning. Your testimony helps us better to understand the impact of cancelling the long-form census. It may be appropriate for us to try and see what is behind all that. This exercise is also aimed, in a more practical sense, at finding how useful the long-form census can be. I believe we are in agreement about this. We mainly agree about the pretext used to cancel it, the jail penalty, even though it has never been used. I even have the feeling that everyone had forgotten about it.

Then, there was a kind of consensus in the House, at least between the opposition parties, to get rid of all that because it just did not make sense. Then the government used another argument and said there were intrusive questions, such as the one relating to the number of bedrooms. Why would we ask people how many bedrooms they have? It is precisely because such information allows us to assess housing problems in Canada. If a family answers that there are eight persons living under the same roof with only two bedrooms, there is a problem. This data also allows us to assess the level of poverty, of course, and also the quality of our housing stock. It is only an example and I believe that we are all in agreement about those things.

I would like to know what you think the intent of the government was in making that decision. When the Conservatives were in the Opposition and Mr. Dryden tried to set up a Canadian network of childcare services, the Conservatives said that grandmothers should take care of children. Their decision reveals their whole concept of what society should look like. It seems to me that we should look at the impact. As you said this morning, women's organizations have told to us what the impact would be on the status of women.

There is also the fact, for example, that we would not know how many people do unpaid work in Canada. That also is intentional, I believe.

The issue is not anymore whether this long-form questionnaire is useful or not. We all know it is. However, we now have a government that does not want us--especially you who fight for women, for youth and for people living in poverty--to have those tools to do this work.

Do you agree with this analysis? If so, what can we do to resist this attack against the most disadvantaged members of our society? I put this question to all of you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

I'm sorry, but there are just 60 seconds left to answer that question.

[Spencer Keys, Government Relations Officer, Canadian Alliance of Student Associations]

We really can't speak to the intentions behind this. We can certainly speak to the effects, which we consider to be overwhelmingly negative for our sector.

What can be done about it? Well, we're not parliamentarians; you are.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Go ahead, there are 35 seconds left.

[Rob Rainer]

What's really behind this is up to the government, I think, to answer. It seems like their response rests on the privacy issue and their concerns about privacy. But to me, it's a bogus argument. Statistics Canada has rigorous protection of the private nature of this information, and I think, as I said in my remarks, we have to change the frame on this and help Canadians understand how the data relate to them and benefit programs and services they may participate in.

So I think it's a question here of changing the frame around this whole issue, and I would hope it's not too late for this decision to be reversed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

We'll now go to Mr. Martin, please.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you for this opportunity.

I just wanted to share with the panellists and with the members that, if they haven't done this, they might want to go to a website called “Census Watch”, and there they'll find a short list of names of people who support the government's decision—the cancelling of the mandatory long form—and then there are 15 pages of names of groups and organizations of all sorts that claim this is a wrong decision. They are groups like the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and my own City of Sault Ste. Marie, who have written letters opposing this decision.

We all know how important data and information are. When we were doing the report on poverty that Rob mentioned earlier, which was tabled yesterday, at one point we wanted to see if we could cost what this would require in terms of money, and I moved the motion here that we go to Treasury Board and ask the clerk to check with Treasury Board to see if that was possible. The answer we got back was yes, but it would take a long time because the data that would be needed were quite comprehensive and complicated to put together.

I also asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer if he would do that, and I got the same answer, which indicates to me that if we're going to get the information we need to implement this really important document now, we will need very detailed data, particularly when we look at costing. For example, Food Banks Canada claims it costs the economy of this country $90 billion a year not to do anything about poverty. How do we take that $90 billion and spend it more effectively so that we don't have poverty? Then maybe we could spend that money on other things.

I would ask Rob to comment on that.

[Rob Rainer]

Sure. Thanks, Tony.

Again, the process that has been in place for determining the content of the census had the appropriate checks and balances to ensure appropriate information was being collected. The first step is to consult with data end-users to assess their socio-economic data needs. So in the context of the report the committee has just released, there are all kinds of data we need now that we can compare to 2006 and so forth.

I'd love to see more data being collected on actual deprivation, if appropriate questions could be put forward in a census about the material deprivation that Canadians are experiencing, because we know that's obviously real, but it's sometimes hard to get access to real deprivation data.

I think the system wasn't broken, and now a decision has been made to fix a problem that really didn't exist. It would be nice to have a sense, leaving the discussion today, if there's still an opportunity for this decision to be reversed.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

If I have some time, I want to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

You have a minute and a half.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Oh, thank you. Okay.

I just want to ask the women's association.... I'm surprised to hear they've stopped collecting data on wages. We all know the tremendous effort, particularly by women, to look after children, and I'm trying to imagine why they would do that—why this government would choose not to measure that. Maybe they think parents mollycoddle their criminal children too much or something--I'm not sure--or they're criminal parents....

Maybe you could share with me what your thinking is around why that decision was made.