Evidence of meeting #34 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
It was only in one language. Sorry, it has to be in both official languages so we can pass it out.
National Co-ordinator, Campaign 2000
My apologies. That's my fault. I do have the chart in both languages. I just didn't get it there fast enough.
It's basically a bar graph. For example, it shows that for recent immigrants the child poverty rate in 1996 was 58%, in 2001 it was 49%, and in 2006 it was 48%. My point there was that obviously data does lots of things, including showing important trends. If we don't have the next iteration or segment of the long-form census, we will interrupt some very important trends.
Our service community partners use these numbers to plan specific services, whether it's classes for English as a second language, personal support services for learning in integrated classrooms for children with disabilities, or specialized health services.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
If you could just wrap up your presentation, that would be appreciated.
National Co-ordinator, Campaign 2000
Yes.
For Family Service Toronto, in planning our own services, whether it's for women suffering family violence or people with intellectual disabilities, we also rely on this data for helping to project our service needs.
I'll stop there.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
Thank you so much.
We will now go to Victor Wong, executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council.
You have seven minutes, Mr. Wong, please.
Victor Wong Executive Director, Chinese Canadian National Council
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning, everyone. Honourable members, thank you for inviting us to present today.
I'm Victor Wong, with the Chinese Canadian National Council. Founded in 1980, the CCNC is a national non-profit organization with 27 chapters across Canada. We're a community leader for Chinese Canadians in promoting a more just, respectful, and inclusive society.
Our position is that we support the compromise proposal advanced by the National Statistics Council. That's our first recommendation to this committee, that you also support what the National Statistics Council is recommending, which is to retain the long form in the 2011 census and to rewrite the Statistics Act ahead of the 2016 census.
There are a number of issues I want to cover, but I only have seven minutes.
I just want to say that census data is invaluable to so many groups. As you heard, the issue pertains to anti-poverty programs but also to immigrant settlement services, housing, and to smaller population groups in Canada.
It also has an impact for small businesses. Many small-business owners are newcomer Canadians wanting to establish themselves here, and they benefit from the small-area data. If you don't have this kind of data, it could lead to inefficient business planning, which would lead to reduced tax revenues. This could possibly lead to higher unemployment or underemployment, lost opportunity, increased cases of business failure. This is bad, not just for the business person, but it's bad for the city, the country, and it's bad for society. We would ask the committee to reflect on this impact.
The ethnocultural groups are very concerned with this move to the voluntary national household survey. We believe this will increase the undercoverage because of the non-response bias, and the quality of the data.
No matter what you decide, whatever happens next year we encourage Statistics Canada to conduct a comprehensive outreach program. Whether you have the mandatory long form or the voluntary national household survey, you should do a comprehensive outreach program directed at, and with the involvement of, ethnocultural and other groups so we can increase the participation.
I had sent something to the clerk, but I guess because it was only in English it didn't get to the members. I want to point out a few things with regard to response burden. I'll need you to follow with me as I go through this document; I'm assuming you don't have it.
For the 2006 census, assume there are 15 households. If you have 15 households in the 2006 census, 12 households would get the short form and three households would get the long form. All 15 forms are mandatory.
Now, if you go to the 2011 census, based on the current plan, all 15 of those households would get the short form and then an additional five households would get this national household survey. In fact, 20 forms are handed out under this new process. This is a 33% increase in response burden, but the quality goes down. All 15 short forms are mandatory, and now five of those households will also get the long form. The long form will contain some of the same questions as the short form because the long form is voluntary. Based on Stats Canada's data quality report...they had conducted a test of data quality of the national household survey and found that the response rate was lower, around 16%, compared to 19% for the mandatory approach of the 2006 census.
If you dig a little bit deeper, it has a tremendous impact with respect to the visible minority communities. I'll just read some data. For Toronto, for visible minority communities, it's estimated that this would lead to a bias of minus 2%. So there would be an underestimate of the minority communities in Toronto. And Toronto is a big city.
There's a bigger problem, in that the subgroups within this category will vary tremendously. For the Chinese group, there would be an overestimate, according to the study, of 17.6%. For the black community, it would be an underestimate of minus 13.2%.
You can see that this kind of variation can have an impact on social cohesion, because you don't have the proper data to begin with.
I just want to end there. I'd be pleased to answer questions from honourable members.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Candice Bergen
Thank you very much for both of those presentations.
We will begin with a five-minute round. That includes questions and answers.
We'll begin with Madam Folco, please.
Liberal
Raymonde Folco Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC
Thank you, Chair.
First of all, Mr. Wong, I will say thank you for your presentation.
I would say that the second part of your presentation particularly, when you talked about statistics, is perfect proof of how important statistics are, first of all, for having as full a statistical portrait as we can have in order to have as full an analysis as we can have. I think that the second part of your presentation was really proof of how important this is. I agree with you that it is important to increase participation of the members of the ethnocultural groups all over Canada in the census, whichever form the census takes.
One of the speakers who appeared in the panel before you mentioned that many members of the ethnocultural community, particularly those we'll call the non-young members, the people who are a little older, tend to not answer the request for statistics. There are all sorts of reasons, which I don't want to go into now but which I can well understand. If there were more people from the ethnocultural groups who actually took part in asking for the statistics, we probably would get a much better profile and a much better portrait.
I don't have a question except to say thank you very much.
I have a question for Ms. Rothman.
Liberal
Raymonde Folco Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC
Madame Rothman, if I can put it this way, you're an expert on poverty in Canada, particularly, I imagine, in your own milieu.
We heard from the previous group that the rate of response among the lowest-earning Canadians was low and that accordingly, there was a risk of not being able to draw a sufficiently accurate picture of persons who fall into this group.
We have a quote that said that the government based its decision on the fact that there were already a number of documents that existed, such as income tax returns, passports, drivers licences, social insurance numbers, and birth certificates, and that these documents were sufficient, and when we add the new form they will want to get statistics from, these would be enough documents to give us a really good portrait of what is going on in Canada. From your standpoint concerning poverty, do you feel that this is right?
National Co-ordinator, Campaign 2000
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.
Conservative
Bloc
Josée Beaudin Bloc Saint-Lambert, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Rothman, you work for Campaign 2000. Your organization has always painted a picture of child poverty. GIven that you have been working for 21 years to try and eradicate child poverty, I would imagine your report contains recommendations to that effect.
Can you tell me what kind of impact the elimination of the long-form census will have on these proposed measures? Since you've been working tirelessly for 21 years, do you anticipate that this move will have a major impact? Will the scrapping of the long-form census mask the socioeconomic reality of certain population groups? Isn't that in some respects the objective sought?
National Co-ordinator, Campaign 2000
On your first question, about the impact of removing the long form, I think it will certainly have an impact on our work, particularly when we look at groups that are highly vulnerable.
I have the chart I referred to in French as well as English, so I will send it to the clerk.
Those groups include recent immigrants who have come to Canada in the last five years, all immigrants, children of aboriginal identity, and children in ethno-racial groups. It used to include children with disabilities. That came from a companion survey, so I won't even talk about that one; it's a separate issue.
If we don't have the solid data from the long-form census we will not be able to track the changes, which we hope are improvements in those groups that are more at risk. What does that mean? It might have an impact on services that are or are not available for recent immigrants, whether it's English as a second language or settlement services that perhaps Mr. Wong can speak to more fully than I.
On aboriginal identity, we know that the question of determining our aboriginal population is important. I know that Statistics Canada is working with the aboriginal communities on that. But what we have now that's the most robust or full is the long-form census. If we lose that we will lose the ability to track what's happening and plan services for that.
The loss of the long-form census will hide the economic reality to some degree. To be fair, income tax data will give us numbers, although we've never been able to get income tax data for the whole country, so that's pretty impossible. It will certainly make it much harder to chart the economic reality for children in low-income and modest-income families.
Bloc
Yves Lessard Bloc Chambly—Borduas, QC
I have a question.
The Conservative government has stated numerous times that the onus is on organizations to ask questions in keeping with their needs. How do you respond to that?
National Co-ordinator, Campaign 2000
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean put questions to individuals or do surveys of their own?
Conservative
Bloc
Yves Lessard Bloc Chambly—Borduas, QC
The government has said at times that organizations going on about questions that will no longer be included in the long-form census... The government maintains that the onus is on these organizations to...
National Co-ordinator, Campaign 2000
I find that totally unacceptable. It doesn't make any sense. Not only do we not have the resources to do it, but the purpose of having that kind of information is broad. It will be important for governments, school boards, religious organizations, and businesses. All of those groups, as I understand it, have spoken up and recommended, by and large, that we keep the long-form census.
Conservative