Researchers and policy-makers will have more difficulty plotting the evolving changes in rural Canada because of new rules for the 2011 national census, say critics.
For the next national census of the Canadian population, the Conservative government says that filling out the detailed long form that used to go to 20 percent of households will no longer be mandatory.
Instead, a short eight-question form will be mandatory and a long form will be sent to more households but it will not be an offence to ignore it.
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The decision has drawn opposition from many who look to the detailed Statistics Canada data to analyze and describe the nation.
“Municipalities use the census like a GPS to navigate on-the-ground changes in our communities, from big to small, urban to rural,” Brock Carleton, chief executive officer of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, said in an e-mail response from Ottawa.
“There’s a real concern that these changes are going to make it harder for us to meet the needs of Canadians. We need to know the federal government isn’t going to let that happen.”
The Census of Agriculture form will not change.
But Ray Bollman from the rural division of Statistics Canada said the long form responses from the population survey are useful to analysts of rural Canada.
They give additional information about changes in rural and agricultural Canada, including more detailed information about income, occupation, ethnic origin and the changing face of small towns and farms.
“I think what could be vulnerable would be the Ag Population Linkage (from the census of population long form) that gives us really valuable information about what is happening,” he said.
The concern of researchers, analysts and those who use their data is by making it voluntary, it could make the responses less representative and accurate because some populations may be less inclined to take the time to fill out the longer form.
“Canada’s professional planners depend on accurate, timely and consistent data to help build Canadian communities,” Marni Cappe, president of the Canadian Institute of Planners, said in a July 5 news release.
“Making the collection of this data voluntary undermines good public policy.”
The Conservatives say industry minister Tony Clement, who is responsible for Statistics Canada, made the change because of Canadian complaints about an invasion of their privacy.
In the Senate, government leader Marjory LeBreton insisted the data collected voluntarily still will be valuable.
“Starting in 2011, there will be changes regarding the national household survey, the long form which so many Canadians objected to and which they viewed as an invasion of their privacy because it was mandatory,” she said last week. “That long form will be voluntary now for Canadians to complete. It is expected that many Canadians will do so.”
An on-line survey being circulated among statisticians, researchers, analysts and data users is trying to collect information that will illustrate to Clement how the changes would undermine the validity of the census results.
One of the questions asks survey respondents to indicate why they think the results will not be scientifically valid, including the likelihood that “only the people who want to answer will answer, unlike the mandatory census survey.”
Clement has said MP offices are deluged with voter complaints at every census.
Supporters of the compulsory long form say they have no evidence that is true.
