Procedure and House Affairs committee  This is where the major urban centres are. The downtown core, large urban centres—that's where we miss people. That's where the problems are. These are the ones that are disadvantaged if you use the unadjusted counts. It's compensated if you use the adjusted counts.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We're not projecting here; we're looking backwards. They are taken into consideration. We do measure interprovincial migration, and the population estimates reflect everything we know about interprovincial migration. For example, one of the techniques we employ is to take different generations of the tax files, find somebody in one file, and then see where they were in the next taxation year.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Statistics Canada does publish projections of Canada's population at the Canada and provincial levels, but we make a distinction between projections and forecasts. A forecast might be what you believe is going to happen. A projection is simply saying if this happens or that happens, this is what results.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I can take as given that the divisor that creates the seat is 100,000, then given those discrepancies I would arrive at the same conclusion.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That is not a statistical question.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's not a statistical question. The government, in deciding how to go about allocation of seats, establishes a formula. The nature of that formula is not a statistical question. I really honestly can't take a position to answer you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not comfortable answering, because the application of the formula is not a responsibility of Statistics Canada. I'm not sufficiently conversant with it to give you an expert opinion in that regard.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can't answer that question.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The only thing that I can state is that none of the three individuals present here today have any recollection of such a consultation taking place. I cannot, however, categorically state that this never did occur.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Basically, we worked with the Privy Council Office. Representatives from this office asked us to make some presentations on the differences between census data and population estimate data, so that they could have a better understanding of the differences and establish which data was the most accurate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We provided them with information that led to such a conclusion.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I do not distribute or use the data, this is done by the committees responsible for establishing electoral boundaries. I provide the data. I agree that within a province, we are going to be using a data set that is different from the data used to—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As I mentioned in my presentation, we do not have adjusted estimates, however, the proportional discrepancy is the same, in theory, for the entire province. The committees that will be examining this issue will have no other choice but to use the unadjusted census data, as there are no other available options.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —for the breakdown between the provinces.