Mr. Dan Beavon (Director, Research and Analysis Directorate, Strategic Policy and Research Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development) at the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee

I'd like to thank the standing committee for the opportunity to appear.

I'm Dan Beavon, and I'm the director of strategic research and analysis at Indian Affairs. I have a group of about 24 researchers, who are probably the heaviest users of aboriginal data, including census data, in Canada. Our group has published, I think, in the last five years at least seven books in the academic press and dozens of articles in different peer-reviewed journals, as well as dozens of studies that we put up on our Internet site as well.

I'm going to turn the presentation over to Eric Guimond. He is one of my senior researchers, and a demographer. He is also a former Statistics Canada employee and probably understands the census data better than anyone else in Canada.

I'll turn it over to Eric.