Canadian Urban Institute

The federal government recently announced its decision to make completion of the long-form questionnaire voluntary for the 2011 Census. The long form is the basis for collecting data on language, immigration, Aboriginal peoples, mobility, ethnicity, education, labour, income and housing.

The concern of the Canadian Urban Institute and a growing number of organizations, as diverse in their interests as the C. D. Howe Institute, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP), is that the government’s decision will likely affect the ability of Statistics Canada to assess the extent of bias in responding to the National Household Survey.

This is because high income households and marginalized communities such as Aboriginal peoples and immigrants are typically underrepresented in voluntary surveys. This undermines the statistical reliability of the data by removing options for weighting, balancing, filling in the gaps or correcting bias since no representative “universe” data will be available for this purpose.

As a champion for good public policy affecting cities and the urban environment, the Canadian Urban Institute is concerned that the government may have overlooked the negative impact that altering the basis of the Census may have on the quality of data upon which local governments and other public institutions, businesses, academia and NGOs like the CUI depend for tracking social trends, preparing population and employment forecasts, making investment choices, selecting business locations etc. The CUI respectfully urges the Honorable Tony Clement, Minister for Industry and the minister responsible for Statistics Canada, to reverse this decision before plans to launch next year’s census are finalized.