Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Ian McKinnon. I chair the National Statistics Council.
The council is the body of volunteer external advisers from across Canada appointed to advise on matters affecting Canada's statistical system. Since the announcement that the 2011 census would contain only the basic questions from the so-called short form census, later supplemented with the addition of questions on language, and that the voluntary national household survey would replace the long-form census, the council has continued to express its concern over the effect of these changes on the Canadian statistical system.
What's at risk?
First, the voluntary national household survey will suffer from self-selection bias, a flaw that cannot be corrected for without having solid benchmark data that the census in its entirety has traditionally provided for the Canadian statistical system. The changes will also likely result in Statistics Canada's not being able to publish as robust or as detailed small-area data for neighbourhoods, towns, or rural areas. Much of the analytic work done by municipalities, private firms, health agencies, and highway and transportation planners, for example, will be affected.
Our second concern is the potential loss of vital benchmark information. The mandatory long form meant that Statistics Canada has had an accurate benchmark for the demographics of populations who are difficult to reach or who are less likely to complete a voluntary survey. This, in turn, means that sampling and weighting strategies for subsequent voluntary surveys can compensate for the bias from differential response rates and produce more reliable information.
The importance of having census benchmarks available is readily apparent when one considers some of the populations who we know are more difficult to reach: young people making the school-to-work transition, urban aboriginal populations, the very affluent, and new immigrants are just some of the examples.
What, then, is to be done?
It is, as my colleagues have said already, far too late to change the manner in which the 2011 census will be conducted. Statistics Canada and everyone involved with the census will work extraordinarily hard to ensure that the information will be collected in a manner that is as useful as possible under the constraints imposed by having to use a voluntary survey to collect the long-form data. I would encourage all Canadians to support StatsCan by completing the census and the national household survey.
On the other hand, the underlying issues remain. Canada's statistical system will not be able to provide the detail and quality of data that users have had access to in the past. This issue will become larger over time as it becomes less useful to use the 2006 census results as a benchmark for subsequent surveys and extrapolations.
Looking to the future, having much of what has traditionally been census data collected in 2011 through a voluntary survey will create a significant discontinuity or break in the century-long census data series. Paradoxically, this actually makes it more appealing to re-examine the ways in which Canada should collect its fundamental information about its population.
If we draw back and look at what other advanced industrial democracies have done or are doing, there are two families of approaches. On one side, we have mandatory censuses, and on the other, we have population registers linked to extensive administrative databases. In addition, other countries trying various approaches have conducted large experiments, but no approach has emerged that provides high-quality data without either a mandatory survey or very extensive data linkage.
Given this situation, the Canadian statistical system would benefit from two things: first, a thorough evaluation covering costs, as well as issues like privacy and intrusiveness, and looking at data quality of all the ways to gather census-like information; second, a mechanism that will allow for the continued collection of the robust and detailed data that Canadians need while this broader evaluation and debate can take place.
Given the importance of this task, I thank you for your attention to this topic and for the work you do.