Back in early July, federal Industry Minister Tony Clement announced that Canada’s 2011 long-form census would no longer be mandatory. Instead, it would now be mailed out to one-third of Canadian households to be filled out voluntarily, without threat of fines or imprisonment. It will also be rebranded as the “National Household Survey” (NHS).
Historically, the 61-question census has been mailed out to one in five households every five years, as opposed to the eight question short form mailed out to everyone else. Refusal to fill out and return the long form could be met with fines or imprisonment, though these penalties were rarely administered or necessary.
The surprise move prompted the head of Statistics Canada, Munir Sheikh, to resign in protest over the decision late last month.
The potential ramifications of such a unilateral decision by the government sparked an immediate outcry from organizations — both for- and nonprofit — across the country which continues to resonate.
Why? Tony? Why?
In a statement explaining the decision, Clement dismissed all objections to the move, saying Canadians shouldn’t have to answer “intrusive” questions under penalty of prosecution.
“There are some people…who believe that Canadians should be forced to divulge intimate, private details about their personal lives to the government. We disagree,” Clement said.
He added that making the long-form census voluntary “strikes a fair and reasonable balance between ensuring the federal government has the basic information every government requires, and protecting the privacy of Canadian citizens. A voluntary long-form survey offers challenges that do not exist in the case of a census that uses coercion to compel completion. Nonetheless, by working together with the professionals at Statistics Canada, I believe we can compensate for these challenges and offer data-users high-quality and accurate information.”
This argument did not wash with the many organizations and corporations who count on accurate data from the questionnaire to plan for their long-term community and business needs.
In a July 20 letter sent to Clement and copied to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Marcel Lauzière, president and CEO of Imagine Canada, expressed his organization’s “disappointment” at the government’s stance on the continuing census debate.
“Without the accurate representative data that the long-form census provides, the sector will lose a significant resource that has been essential for developing its responses to the economic, social, environmental and cultural changes that face communities across Canada,” he wrote.
Lisa Dillon, a professor of demography with the Université de Montréal, urged colleagues in academia across the country to unite in a petition against the government, citing four main objections to the scrapping of the mandatory long-form census. On a blog post she outlined the following objections:
- The Canadian government will not have the same commitment to the NHS as it had to the long-form census;
- As a voluntary survey, the NHS will be biased against certain populations, particularly vulnerable subgroups who we particularly wish to study (and we will have no way of weighting the data to compensate, except with respect to the basic questions asked in the short-form census);
- Researchers (including those at Stats Can) will not have the census data needed to evaluate the representativity of other surveys;
- We will lose the possibility of conducting long-term comparisons; and;
- Our ability to conduct in-depth analyses using a broad range of control variables, examining small population subgroups, including racial minorities and at a very refined geographic level will be erased.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has been on the leading edge of this development. On June 30, Armine Yalnizyan, CCPA’s senior economist, raised one of the first voices of opposition to Clement’s plan.
“The decision to stop inquiring about the world around us is as political as the decision to ask questions. The issues that are no longer being probed by the government or Statistics Canada are not going away,” Yalnizyan wrote. “Without a foundation of reliable, consistent information, evidence-based public policy is impossible. It is troubling to think that our elected leaders think decision-based evidence-making is preferable. This may work for a time, but it is not a durable strategy. We at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives urge to the Government of Canada to stop politicizing the work of Statistics Canada and retain utilization of the Census long-form questionnaire.”
The CCPA also has posted a “continuing roll call” listing individuals and organizations both opposed to and for the census decision. As of Tuesday August 3, the opposition list dwarfed those in agreement with the government 241 to 5. You can view it here.
The case for scrapping
Aside from the government, of those on the list who support the Clement’s decision, one of the most vocal is the National Citizens Coalition. It’s president, Peter Coleman, in a July 21 letter to Maclean’s Magazine defends Clement’s decision by calling it a good “starting point” to remedy what he terms “faults” in the long-form census as it existed before this change.
By way of example, he notes that the 2001 census showed that 20,000 respondents indicated they belonged to the religion “Jedi.”
“[G]overnments are able to collect data in more modern ways that avoid extreme redundancy…It is curious that most of the groups/organizations clamouring to protect the long census rely upon that census data in some form or another. It is nice to receive free statistics at the expense of taxpayers, but our government should not be compelling this cooperation with the threat of jail time nor should we be bankrolling the whole endeavour. If organizations and special interest groups want data, they should pay for it,” he wrote.
Coleman acknowledged that the debate on the issue “need not provoke an all-or-nothing allegiance to either Minister Clement or the long form census. It is more important to open the discussion about overcoming the flaws of the census.”
Us and them
Yalnizyan, writing last week on the Progressive Economics Forum blog, posted the following argument against the government’s apparently final decision.
“Admittedly, if you are on the receiving end of the long-form process, some lines of inquiry may seem strange coming from ‘the government’: How much time do you spend with your children or doing housework? When do you leave for work, how long does it take you to get there, and how do you make that journey? How many bedrooms do you have in your house? What about bathrooms? But, as weirdly personal as some of the questions seem, it’s really not all about you. It’s about understanding how widespread are the attributes of prosperity like adequate housing. Or identifying where pandemics could be spread more quickly. Or assessing the degree to which young families are spending more time at work than with their families or communities. Or the changing patterns of how families get formed over the course of generations. Or how much patterns vary among people with a PhD versus a certificate of high school completion. Are we essentially the same, or are we pretty different? Are the differences converging or getting bigger? Because these stories must mandatorily be collected from all census data helps us see how these stories are evolving…by region, ethno-racial background, income level, age, household type, immigrant status, and level of ability or disability. Every single one of these parameters is changing quickly, as Canadian society ages, the labour force shrinks, we continue to flock to cities, and our legacy as a nation of immigrants takes another leap forward.”
Meanwhile, the new NHS document is slated to print by week’s end, which has prompted organizations to implore the government to reconsider.
Last week, the Statistical Society of Canada launched a campaign aimed at convincing the government to scrap the voluntary NHS and reinstate the long-form census by offering a compromise position.
“We agree with the government that some changes to the census should be considered. We also believe that these changes should be thoroughly tested to ensure that the quality of the data is not adversely affected, and that there is considerable expertise at Statistics Canada and on the National Statistics Council to provide the direction and framework for any major initiative restructuring the census,” the society said.
It proposed the following terms:
- That the mandatory long form of the census for 2011 be reinstated (one in five households sampling as before).
- That Statistics Canada, with the advice of the National Statistics Council, be directed to undertake studies to show the impact of a voluntary survey over a mandatory one for collecting census long form data. Statistics Canada will prepare a report indicating the degree of bias in each question of the voluntary survey. This report will inform Statistics Canada and the government on the future evolution of the census.
- That wherever possible the privacy concerns of individuals on specific questions be addressed with the assistance of the privacy commissioner, either by the removal or the rewording of specific questions.
- That, in order to restore faith in the independence of information provided by Statistics Canada, one of the pre-eminent statistical agencies in the world, the methodology used for collection and analysis by Statistics Canada be reaffirmed to be free of influence from any other body including government and NGOs, and private corporations, subject to those laws enacted by parliament protecting the privacy of individuals and the public.
No word yet from the government on whether it will consider these requests, but as of last week, all indications point to a firm resolve on its part to roll-out the NHS and move forward with Conservative government policy on the matter.
Editor’s Note: On July 26, the Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada started legal proceedings, submitting documents to Federal Court, to challenge the government’s census decision. The group contests that axing the long-form census will lose data that is needed to evaluate the number of Francophone Canadians, and as such could affect the number of French language courses required to service the French community. An August 4 Canadian Press report states the group “argues that Ottawa’s move violates not only the Official Languages Act, but also the Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It says that without reliable data about the francophone presence in Canada, the quality of government services in French could suffer.”
The federation also wants an injunction imposed on this year’s revised census mail-out.
Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.
Please note: While we ensure that all links and email addresses are accurate at their publishing date, the quick-changing nature of the web means that some links to other websites and email addresses may no longer be accurate.
