It's never been reliable, from our perspective. When I joined the Canadian Association of the Deaf in 1986, my very first battle was with Statistics Canada over what was then the health census, the health and activities limitation survey. That was the first disability census.
I'm starting to lose my voice; I'm sorry.
The problem was with the question involved in the census—and in tax data too, with the disability tax credit. The problem there was that the wording does not match what deaf people understand. For example, on the long census my favourite question was, “Do you have a disability”, blah, blah, blah—“something that limits your activity” or whatever.
Deaf people don't believe they have a disability; they believe they are a linguistic and cultural minority, because we have our own language, our own culture. It's different, distinct, and is recognized by the United Nations and by the linguistic association.... I forget the full name of that place.
We are a distinct minority group, not a disability group. When people see that question, “Do you have a disability”, they say no. So they're not counted as disabled. You get a distorted portrait of how many deaf people there are.
Well, the long census is gone now, and I'm still fighting with Statistics Canada over the terminology to use. I had a human rights complaint against them, which was finally settled about one month before the long census was torn up. It was all based on the long census, on making it more accessible and compatible for deaf people. We got the agreement and then, boom, it was the end of the long census. The agreement is all dead now. I don't expect any other kind of household data or tax data or anything to come up with reasonable data.
That's why I said that this is the only credible data collection ever done about deaf people, because we did it ourselves. Deaf people went into the deaf community. That hasn't happened.... Nobody has done that before or since.