Thank you for your question. It's not an easy one.
Previous Statistics Canada experience has shown that changing a questionnaire or moving some of its questions around will certainly influence the results obtained. That's not news. Of course, the fact that the 2011 census questions were asked in a different context led to a loss of comparability. That is not insurmountable, but it has been shown that we must be careful in interpreting the comparisons between the data from 2011 and that from previous censuses.
As you know, next May, Statistics Canada will release the first data from the National Household Survey, which is voluntary. We don't know yet what the quality of that survey's data will be. That has been mentioned already. The information is available on the Statistics Canada website. In terms of geographic location and subpopulations, we are still not sure what the quality of that data will be. It is important to point out that the 2006 long form census contained questions not only about linguistic issues, but also about profession, industry, education, immigrant status, and so on.