Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I want to thank you, first of all, for inviting our association to appear before you today on this very important issue. Many of our members feel quite strongly and are quite concerned about what this means in terms of their future business practices.
My name is Dr. Doug Norris and I am currently senior vice-president and chief demographer for Environics Analytics. In that capacity, I work with many large businesses, small businesses, non-profit organizations, and governments at all levels in using the census information and other information to help them make their business decisions.
Previously I spent 30 years at Statistics Canada, most recently as director general of social and demographic statistics. While there, I was a member of the senior census management team. However, today I am here as a representative of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association—I'll refer to it as MRIA. With me is my colleague, Greg Jodouin, who is our organization’s government relations consultant.
MRIA is the single authoritative voice of the market and survey research industry in Canada. Our membership includes over 2,000 individual research practitioners and more than 400 corporate members—large businesses, small businesses of all types—who are users of research information. MRIA is tasked with developing and enforcing the standards for the Canadian opinion research industry. Overall, we account for about three quarters of a billion dollars a year in economic activity in Canada.
Our association considers the issue of the mandatory long-form census to be of prime importance. We have written to the minister on this issue, and I believe a copy of our letter to him will be circulated to committee members. We'll also be making available a copy of the brief here today.
Our basic concern is that the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census will affect the availability of data, the quality of data, and the reliability of data—all that is considered essential to Canadian businesses and many other organizations in trying to navigate through what is becoming a very complex economy and complex and rapidly changing society. We have the baby boomers aging, we have high levels of immigration, immigrants struggling in many cases to adapt to Canadian society, our aboriginal population becoming an important part of our future labour market. All of these issues are being faced by businesses trying to sort this out and depending for that purpose on census information.
Although the new voluntary national household survey will come into play and may provide good data for some purposes, it is not expected to be able to provide reliable information for many purposes. I think you've heard from many commentators on that issue. In particular, the concern with the loss of the mandatory census is the loss of our ability to track change over time. It's often the trends that are important rather than a level of something—which is, however, of interest. It's the question of whether things are improving or deteriorating. Do we need a new program put in place? Do we have to modify a program? It's those trends, and also the data on small population groups and small geographic areas.
Our businesses operate in different parts of Canada, in rural Canada, in urban Canada, and in big parts of the large CMAs. Toronto is by no means homogeneous; Ottawa is not homogeneous. Our businesses need to understand the local population around, for example, a store or other operation that they engage in. That population is changing as well. It's the loss of both the trend information and this small-area and small-population-group information that's of real concern to our members.
As many others have pointed out and as you've heard this morning, the response rate in a voluntary survey will likely be substantially lower than average for hard-to-reach segments of the population: low-income groups, marginalized communities such as the aboriginal population, immigrants. Also, high-income households will probably be hard to reach. The new national household survey is therefore likely to lead to skewed data. This will give rise to doubts about the accuracy.
Unfortunately, we just won't know which of the data is accurate—some of it will be—and which is not, so there will be concerns raised about all of the census information. Large sample sizes, although the national household survey is larger than the last census, don't address the issue of bias and skewness.
Although the census decision will impact on many aspects of our work, I'd like to give you a few examples of the negative impact on our association members' ability to measure and monitor trends and plan targeted programs related to women's equality.
Many businesses have particular programs targeted at the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women. In looking at those programs, they rely on census data as a benchmark, as a comparator, to see how well they're doing. For example, they may compare their own workforce profile to the profile of the local labour market outside: how do they compare, and are things improving? Are they moving in the right direction? Do we need to modify our programs or introduce new programs?
More generally, relevant comparisons of male/female income differences, an important indicator of gender equality, really require very detailed data by age, education, specific occupations, class of worker. Only a census can provide this information. It's important again to do these comparisons at a local level: the labour market in Toronto is not the same as the labour market in northern Alberta, for example.
From the survey industry's perspective, another important concern is the loss of the long-form census as a benchmark for the many surveys our members carry out. Survey researchers rely on the census data—and refer to it as the gold standard of surveys—in order to monitor their own surveys and adjust their surveys to be representative of the population as they see it in the census. We cannot stress strongly enough that without the data from the long-form census, without the “gold standard” to refer to, all survey results, including those from the national household survey, will likely be biased to some extent, particularly on important dimensions such as income, education, housing, and many other characteristics.
Corporate and government decision-makers rely on accurate and reliable research data to help them make the right decisions and to navigate through our complex society. Measuring the trends and conditions of women and other population groups will be more important than ever as we come out of this post-recession and our economy develops. There will be a lot of interest in how well various groups are doing as we emerge from the recession. How well will our labour market be responding to the many changes we see around us?
In the future, the lack of reliable information may in fact result in poorer decisions, lower business efficiencies, and likely increased costs for businesses as they go out and search for other information to replace what the census can't provide. I'd suggest that overall, productivity and our competitiveness may in fact be affected by the loss of this very valuable navigation tool.
We therefore urge the committee to recommend that cabinet reconsider and reverse its decision to eliminate the mandatory long-form census.
I think I'll leave it there. I look forward to your questions. Thank you again for asking us to appear.