Industry committee  The census portion of the 2011 census program was mandatory, and the response rates held up very well. They were in the high nineties, around 98%, for the 2011 census population per se. For the national household survey, which was conducted on a voluntary basis, the response rate was around 69%.

Industry committee  Yes, there is a significant amount of information that isn't necessarily available from other administrative data. Statistics Canada does in fact use administrative data to the greatest extent possible to avoid imposing a burden on businesses and small businesses, but nonetheless there are a number of cases where the data's not available either on a sufficiently timely basis, or the data itself is not available from administrative records.

Industry committee  Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you and good morning. I welcome the opportunity to speak to you about Bill C-625. I'd like to begin by saying that Statistics Canada fully supports the proposed amendment to remove the penalty of imprisonment from the Statistics Act for Canadians who refuse to comply with mandatory data collections.

Public Accounts committee  We're actually involved in a complete redesign of our website. We're working with an external panel of people to guide us, experts in the area, and we're doing a lot of user research. We're rebuilding the website. We're consolidating. Right at the moment we have several different databases that people have to consult distinctly.

Public Accounts committee  We're looking to start the rollout, as I recall, over the course of the next year.

Public Accounts committee  Once again, it is true that the problem was concentrated in remote areas, but that does not mean that there were no problems in certain census subdivisions closer to the large urban centres. The issue mostly concerned remote areas, but by combining census subdivisions, we can create publishable units.

Public Accounts committee  This is actually proceeding jointly with the job vacancy survey. As it is for the job vacancy survey, the intention is to be able to publish data by occupation for small areas, below the provincial level. We're trying to develop the survey so it's integrated with the job vacancy survey.

Public Accounts committee  We could certainly expect collection some time in 2015. Publication may not come in 2015.

Public Accounts committee  Just as the Auditor General said, it was concentrated in the smallest sense of subdivision.

Public Accounts committee  The sentence that the Auditor General wrote wasn't referring to them, but there are census subdivisions with zero population.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, it was again a very well-taken point. We're implementing a three-year term limit on members. We have started the process already of reconstituting some of these committees.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not trying to minimize the fact that what happened is very unfortunate and that the loss of the data for those municipalities is not a desirable outcome; I'm not arguing that. Nor is it an outcome that we should dismiss. It's one we're going to make every effort in the 2016 census to reduce to the smallest extent possible.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. That's accurate. Saskatchewan was the most affected province of all provinces.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we're reviewing all of the membership, to ensure that it's appropriate and more broadly representative of the user community.

Public Accounts committee  Well, they play two roles, or more than two roles, actually. Some of the advisory committees are really committees of experts who are knowledgeable about such things as consumer price indexes or survey methods. We have an advisory committee on statistical methods composed of leading statisticians from around the world, particularly from the United States and Canada.