Evidence of meeting #4 for Official Languages in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was question.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
Is it possible it's less than five, like four, three?
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
All I'm saying is that, if there are only a few, you're not going to get the exact—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Mr. Samson, your time is up.
Thank you, Mr. Arora.
Mr. Beaulieu, you have two minutes.
Bloc
Mario Beaulieu Bloc La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC
Mr. Arora, I think you could at least give the different hypotheses, the pros and cons.
I will let you finish your answer to the question about the ethnicity of Canadians. I'm not sure that adding the “Canadian” category in the response choices is such a good idea, since anyone could answer “Canadian”. It would then be impossible to learn about people's ethnic origins and to see the cumulative assimilation of French-speaking and Acadian communities and the harm they have suffered.
Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
It is not a category we added, but one of the examples of the response sometimes given. The question simply asks people for their ethnic origin, and some people answered “Canadian”.
In addition, we did a study on the whole issue of ethnicity. We will share the report and the results with you if you are interested.
Bloc
Mario Beaulieu Bloc La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC
Perfect.
I will get back to the rights-holders, quickly. You said your test results would be made public before you submit them to cabinet.
Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
That's not what I said. The results will be made public after the cabinet makes its decision. These issues are addressed in the recommendations.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu and Mr. Arora.
Mr. Duvall, you have two minutes.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks, Mr. Arora.
I need to ask this question. Just hypothetically, we're going to get a census here. I'm going to every fourth person and ask, “Are you a Canadian? Were you born in Canada?” That will be the question. Are you telling me that I'm going to get great, quality data just by asking three out of these 12 people?
Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
If you go to 3.7 million households in Canada and ask them that question, and you have the statistical rigour and the expertise to be able to weight that up to a population and to benchmark it to the fact that we've asked that question for the last so many censuses, yes, you will get a very good answer, one that you can repeat over and over again with a different sample. We can actually tell you the difference in the variability between one sample and the next. That's what we do all the time.
NDP
Scott Duvall NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Okay. Thank you for that, but I must have gone to the wrong school. I look at everybody's vote. That's how I get the census of what the people are actually voting on or what they're saying, by asking each individual. I don't get it by skipping every three people, that's for sure. We'll never get a census out of that.
What would be the consequences of putting it only on the short form or the long form, missing one or the other?
Chief Statistician of Canada, Statistics Canada
As I've explained before, if you put it on the short form, you are subjecting—notwithstanding the point that was made earlier about the reduction of burden—a response from a number of those, obviously, who are pertinent to that.... On the long form, it's the same thing. Now, there are questions of costs. There are questions of burdens. There are some quality issues that can also, by the way, enter into this. Just because you put it on the short questionnaire and administered it to all Canadians, there are non-sampling errors, if you like, that start to creep in. Some people may not understand the question and may give you what's called a false positive or a false negative.
Administering it on the short form doesn't always guarantee that you're going to get a better estimation. You could actually start to over-.... You could get responses from people who maybe don't understand what they're saying. Our statistical methods benchmark for those kinds of things. We have post-censal studies that adjust for those kinds of things.
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you, Mr. Duvall. Your time is up.
I'd like to thank Mr. Arora, Ms. Barr-Telford and Mr. Dufour for coming to testify for our study on the enumeration of rights-holders.
We're going to suspend for a few minutes.
[Proceedings continue in camera]