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.