First of all, I would say I'm not a bona fide statistician, but I work a lot with numbers, and I work with others who do. I think we know that things like drivers licences and other kinds of ID don't tell us very much. I don't think at this point we even have access to any aggregate data. I shouldn't say they don't tell us. They tell us the basic fact-sheet information that your property tax might tell you. Property tax forms for renters don't tell you very much at all, so forget that one.
When we want to talk about better understanding people's situation, we need firm and consistent data. Neither of those sources that you were talking about are set up to give us a picture of who is in Canada, who lives in Canada, who is new to Canada, and who's living in what income bracket.
When we talk about the income tax forms, we'll make an important comment. We've tried to use income tax data at times. First, it's quite costly. Second, it can only be used in a small area—at least in my experience—but it does not give us any demographic breakdowns, nor should it. You pay your income tax according to your income. It doesn't tell us whether you're a newcomer, whether you're of aboriginal identity, or whether you're from an ethno-racial group--all important factors from our perspective. I would say we desperately need a census, because the other major measure of poverty that we use—and we use it in our report card, as do many other people working with statistics—is the survey of labour and income dynamics that is done every year. It follows a panel of people over time and it supplements the census.
It's a much smaller sample. It means that if somebody asks me why we don't have a poverty rate expressed in the same way for Nova Scotia as we do for Ontario, it's because the data's not there. The sample is not big enough. I'll just leave it at that.
I think from our experience of doing report cards since 1992, that census data is an essential marker, especially to establish the trends.