Evidence of meeting #37 for Status of Women in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:05 a.m.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
Yes.
With respect to other countries, I have worked extensively with Eurostat, which is a European Union-wide database. I've worked extensively with the individual country databases for countries such as Sweden, Norway, Spain, the U.K., and so on. And not only do they have unbelievably detailed sex-disaggregated data available to anybody--even to me in Canada--for no payment whatsoever, but it's produced much more quickly, it's more comprehensive, it has more depth to it, and it is something that no one would consider dropping. Canada has lost its statistical edge in comparison with those countries.
Canada does have a lot of micro-simulation in the development and application stage, which does compare fairly well with some of the European material. But still, if the census goes, the platform for all of the new micro-simulation programs is also going to vaporize.
10:05 a.m.
Co-Chair of the Board of Directors, Canadian Women's Foundation
I just wanted to clarify one point, because I think I had my numbers mixed up, and I know it's going on record.
It was the U.S. in 2002. They did a test to see what would happen if they went to a voluntary American community survey, and they found that 43% of white households responded, as did 20% of Hispanic households and 22% of black households. There's other data out there that shows that exactly that happens.
It would be great to know why. I don't profess to know why, but we know it happens. Statistics Canada have said sampling was unlikely to produce accurate data for small populations, so the smaller the population within the big population, the less likely it's going to be accurate.
And when Statistics Canada did a test and looked at what Canada would look like, they found the same thing. They did a simulation, and they found that in the Toronto population, blacks were underrepresented by 13.2%, Chinese were overrepresented by 17.6%, and reported Indians were underrepresented by 11.7%. This is in the last year or so. This isn't 10- or 20-year-old data. And strangely enough--I have no idea why--construction workers were overrepresented by 9.4%, and bureaucrats in most of the major cities were massively overrepresented. So we see completely skewed results, not just by ethnic origin or by economic class, but by job. We know that's happening. That will happen with a voluntary survey.
So to me, the fundamental issue is voluntary versus mandatory. You can tweak questions. That's a separate issue. The issue is whether it's voluntary or mandatory. Right now the mandatory census is used to correct this sort of thing. So when you get results back and you see that blacks are underrepresented by 13%, you can adjust for that and weight it. You can't if you don't have that.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
November 18th, 2010 / 10:10 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think I'd like to head down a little bit of a different track in terms of our conversation today, to something we haven't chatted about it.
When the decision was made to go from mandatory to voluntary, I certainly had phone calls to my office, and not an insignificant number of phone calls. I certainly heard things on both sides of the issue, no question, but some of these phone calls were to say thank you. And the stories they had, whether they were single moms or elderly gentlemen.... In a number of cases, they were quite frightened. They had been picked for the long-form census. They were getting knocks on their doors at eight o'clock at night or when they were getting ready for their children to go to school, and they were feeling very frightened by the process.
I've always thought that a carrot is better than a stick, certainly in the profile of the conversation around the census and the importance of the general household survey. But would we not be better to spend our energy and effort...? We have the people who are hired to collect the data, who are knocking on doors saying there is a $500 fine. And no, we never have fined anyone. We have never sent them to jail, but those possibilities have certainly been made very apparent to the people. A carrot rather than a stick.... This not going to be supporting people if we move this forward, because there is manpower that is focused on bringing these results in. I don't think we can completely discount these people who feel that way, and the very frightening experience that they've had.
So we need a carrot rather than a stick.
10:10 a.m.
Editor, Recent Research on Caregiving, As an Individual
I would say to the comment that I agree. I mean, I'm kind of a pig-headed person. I didn't start wearing a seat belt until the law made me, and then I was mad at the law. I prefer the carrot, but what kind of carrot could we give them? A tax break? I don't know.
I think that's exactly the problem with the people you're hearing from who are afraid: they're vulnerable. They're already afraid. They feel excluded and they're afraid. So—
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
So they're afraid and they have someone at their door as they're getting kids ready to go to school, as they're going to bed at night: “You have to fill in this form.”
10:10 a.m.
Editor, Recent Research on Caregiving, As an Individual
These are the particular people who are going to be the most at risk if we don't let government make this survey. Because the data will still be there, and someone else will start collecting it. We put ourselves at risk for a commercial organization collecting the data, and they can ask really biased questions because they don't have the standard of ethics.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
We're not saying that the data shouldn't be collected. Absolutely, data is incredibly important for everything that you've talked about. What we're talking about is carrot rather than stick.
10:15 a.m.
Editor, Recent Research on Caregiving, As an Individual
Yes, but what about this question about the unpaid labour? You are stopping that question.
10:15 a.m.
Professor and Chair, Economics Department, Saint Mary's University, As an Individual
I was just going to say that the example you used, the single parent who is trying to get her kids out the door and may be reluctant to take on the time for the mandatory...that's exactly the kind of situation we're talking about. If it's voluntary, we will not hear from that group and we will not have that broad representation. It's the more vulnerable groups that will be underrepresented.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Do you not believe that the time spent in terms of knocking on the door should be “Hey, this is important; can we help you or support you in doing this?”
10:15 a.m.
Co-Chair of the Board of Directors, Canadian Women's Foundation
The problem is that the data shows it doesn't work. The data shows that in making it voluntary, you can knock at the door, you can be really nice, but the vulnerable people will not respond for lots of different reasons, which probably are not understood yet. Whether they're trying to put their child to bed, working two jobs, feeling socially isolated, or whether they don't like the government, the data shows, and other voluntary surveys indicate, that it doesn't work.
I would love it if taxes were voluntary, but they're not. It's just considered a simple responsibility. You report your income and pay taxes on it.
What I read showed that Statistics Canada got 25 to 30 complaints a year. I don't think that's significant in a population of 33 million people, and I, frankly, as a taxpayer and a citizen, would be very disturbed to see a government driving policy based on 25 to 30 people out of 33 million. I don't think that's good strategy.
So I love carrots, but I don't think it has to be heavy stick--but it's a stick.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Yes, Ms. Lahey, quickly, because we're coming towards the end of the time here.
10:15 a.m.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
The justice department attempted to get Statistics Canada to do exactly that. The general social survey does not do any polling in any of the territories for precisely the reasons we're talking about. People are too isolated, too vulnerable, and they simply have too low of a response rate on anything that is voluntary.
So special pilot projects were carried out by Statistics Canada not once but several times, attempting to find a way, some way, to get people in the territories to respond in large enough numbers so that the GSS data could be valid. It could not be done.
The Department of Justice, because they were intent on showing an increase in crime rates in those areas, decided they would go ahead and publish the data on their own with big warnings saying it was not valid data but it was the only data available.
You can go on the Justice Canada web page and read about all of the efforts they went to in trying to do exactly the kind of thing you're describing.
Statistically it does not work, and unless we want to go back to sort of pre-governance days, we unfortunately need a mandatory census in Canada.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Hedy Fry
Thank you.
We have finished this round.
I am going to ask a question of this committee.
We have 10 minutes left. We could do one round at two minutes each because there are five people in the round. But if we go over—and we have been going over time here. Some of the people answering the questions take a lot of time and some of the people asking the questions take a lot of time. The bottom line is that we will take more than two minutes. If we take more than two minutes each, we will not be able to get to the work that we have to do in the last 15 minutes of this committee.
If people want this round, let me know. If we do this round, I'm going to cut you off in mid-sentence, and I don't want people complaining when I do so because my job is to keep us on time.
All right. Let's start the two-minute round.
Ms. Neville, for the Liberals.
10:15 a.m.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
It's not really a two-minute question, but I'll try it nonetheless.
We do not have a mandatory long-form census, or it's proposed that we do not. I want to know what the implications are of not having it mandatory with this particular census round, and then one hopes in the future it will be mandatory. What is the impact on research by having a gap where it's not mandatory?
Who wants to answer?
10:15 a.m.
As an Individual
Even if you can catch up later in the particular circumstance, when we're going through this economic upheaval that we're facing now, the gap probably comes at a pretty bad time.
10:15 a.m.
Co-Chair of the Board of Directors, Canadian Women's Foundation
It's used internationally right now, but they won't accept it if it's a voluntary survey. There are all kinds of implications. You can't go back and make that up afterwards.
We'll lose a five-year snapshot of Canada, of Canadians. That is what we'll lose.
10:20 a.m.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
People draw trend lines, but there won't be any data. People will be guessing.
10:20 a.m.
Co-Chair of the Board of Directors, Canadian Women's Foundation
It'll be like a dotted trend line for 2011.
