Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
These profound words were credited to Greek philosopher Aristotle.
The statement is true for countries as well as individuals. For decades the national census, produced every five years, allowed Canadians to know themselves.
It gave an objective snapshot of who we really are as Canadians, not how we think we are or how we might like to be or how politicians tell us we are.
Census information helped policy-makers design services and programs to meet citizen needs. Businesses, non-government agencies and academics also used the data to better understand the changing nature of the population.
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However, in 2010 the Conservative government ended the mandatory long form census, giving a nod to citizens’ desire for privacy even though few had asked for it.
It was replaced with the voluntary National Household Survey (NHS), which accompanied the mandatory short form census.
One-third of Canadian households received the NHS in 2011, and of those, about 69 percent completed it fully.
The first results were released last week and they reveal interesting things about us.
Canadians are becoming more diverse as immigrants from every corner of the world come to our shores looking for a better life. Our religious diversity is also expanding with the majority still Christian but a growing number practicing the world’s other great religions and also more counting themselves as without religion.
Statistics Canada will release more NHS information in coming months, filling in the image of Canadians. However, it will be an incomplete picture.
Want to know about the changing population of the town of Rouleau, Sask., home of the late great TV rural comedy Corner Gas?
Sorry, the completion rate of the survey was inadequate to produce useable data.
The same was true for Saskatchewan places from Abernethy to Zenon Park.
Indeed, only 57 percent of Saskatchewan census subdivisions, representing 82 percent of the population, have data that was released, the worst performance of all the provinces.
Alberta and Manitoba had data released for 75 and 71 percent of census subdivisions respectively.
Their results were still below the national rate of 75 percent. The release rate for the 2006 long-form census was far better, at 97 percent.
The data tends to be strong in urban places with larger populations and weaker in small and rural places.
It is troubling that the picture of rural Canada is so incomplete.
As one CBC commentator asked, if you are not counted, do you count?
Many rural people already believe the standard of health, education, transportation and other services they receive from government lags their urban cousins.
Could service delivery deteriorate more if government’s understanding of the rural population becomes clouded due to lack of accurate data?
With the NHS’s data shortcomings illuminated, the government should rethink its stand on a mandatory survey.
Privacy might be a prized concept, but we give it away everyday.
Point of purchase data and customer loyalty programs give mountains of data to retailers about what we buy. In our online lives we leave a trail that businesses follow like bloodhounds. We become an open book as we fashion our Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Governments might also use these non-traditional data sources to determine the needs of the population.
But in the end, that would likely be a less welcome intrusion into our private lives than the national census, which is conducted in full public view and subject to robust legal safeguards on individual privacy.
