Evidence of meeting #137 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was household.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:40 p.m.
Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
Only in aggregate form, never as an individual record.
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Whitby, Lib.
Can any member of the opposition access Statistics Canada data?
4:40 p.m.
Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
Only in aggregate form, never as an individual record.
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Whitby, Lib.
Is there any pressure from any politician to access the collected data from Statistics Canada?
4:40 p.m.
Dan Albas Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Chief Statistician, for coming in today and for the work you and your organization do for Canadians.
I'd like to start with clarifying a few things.
First of all, many people were under the assumption that it was 500,000 individuals. In your remarks today, you said “households”. Are those 500,000 households or individuals?
4:40 p.m.
Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
It's 500,000 dwellings. Our unit of measure there is a particular dwelling. From there we create census families, economic families and other prototypes.
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Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
The average household size in Canada is just under three, I think.
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Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Are we looking at approximately 1.5 million people who will be picked up by this sample?
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Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
Well, it's a little bit more complicated than that. What we're trying to do is to collect information at a neighbourhood level. We know that in some neighbourhoods you'll have smaller household sizes. There could be an apartment building, for example, or a student residence or whatever it is. Others would be more single-family dwellings.
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Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Obviously, Canadians' health records as well as their financial records are quite important to them. Suddenly having a change in scheme has raised, I think, a lot of concern.
When you are collecting this information, will it include children?
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Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
Our intent is not to include children.
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Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
How do you safeguard that if someone has a bank account and lives in that household—
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Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
That's why we do need some level of personal information, so that we can detect what are outliers and what are in scope.
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Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
What if someone has a joint bank account for a relative—let's say an elderly mother or father who's on their own—that their name is on also and they live separate in a different household? Will that then be caught up by your survey of that particular household?
4:40 p.m.
Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
If we're talking about a multi-generational occupied dwelling, for example, then that would form—
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Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
I'm not speaking about that, sir. I'm speaking about specifically other people. Some people will have joint accounts because they have control over those accounts for an elderly parent or grandparent. Will that elderly parent or grandparent be caught up because their social insurance number is tied to that bank account?
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Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
This is still in a design phase. It's a pilot project.
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Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
Once the data comes to us, those are the kinds of things that we will look at.
There are definitions about the conditions under which a census family is formed, an economic family is formed. Those are the kinds of things that we will determine.
We're not interested in an individual's transaction. We're interested in the household consumption pattern.
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Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC
Let's go back to the pilot project.
Originally, the letter you wrote to the Canadian Bankers Association did not mention anything about a pilot project.
Also, I'd like you to confirm, sir, that TransUnion, a credit bureau, has given Statistics Canada personal information on 27 million or so Canadians, when it comes to their credit file, dating back 15 years. Is that the case? Does the pilot project you're discussing today include that?
You've said that this pilot project has not gone forward. I'd like you to explain the reason.
