Canada 2011 Census - Voluntary Long-form Survey Controversy

Voluntary Long-form Survey Controversy

Ahead of the 2011 Census, the Conservative government announced that the long-form questionnaire will no longer be mandatory. This decision was made by the June 17, 2010, Order in Council created by the Minister of Industry defining the questions for the 2011 Census as including only the short-form questions; this was published in the Canada Gazette on June 26, 2010, however a news release was not issued by Minister of Industry Tony Clement until July 13, 2010. This release stated in part "The government will retain the mandatory short form that will collect basic demographic information. To meet the need for additional information, and to respect the privacy wishes of Canadians, the government has introduced the voluntary National Household Survey" On July 30, 2010, Statistics Canada published a description of the National Household Survey, intended to be sent to about 4.5 million households. Industry minister Tony Clement stated that the change to voluntary forms was made because of privacy-related complaints, though he acknowledged that the decision was made without consulting organizations and governments that work closely with Statistics Canada. Clement had previously said that this change was made on the advice of Statistics Canada.

The move has been criticized by a number of organizations and individuals and has been the subject of some amusing satirical articles. The new voluntary form is judged to be less accurate than the mandatory long form by many industry professionals and the organizations which make use of the data. Ivan Fellegi, the former Chief Statistician of Canada originally appointed in 1985 by the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, said that he would have quit his job if the government had taken this change during his tenure. He claims that those who are most vulnerable (such as the poor, new immigrants, and aboriginals) are least likely to respond to a voluntary form, which weakens information about their demographic. Munir Sheikh, Fellegi's successor as Chief Statistician appointed by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper on February 15, 2008, resigned on July 21, 2010, in protest of the Conservative government's change in policy. In a public letter, Sheikh wrote that he could not legally comment on what advice he had given the government regarding the census, but he did comment against the government's decision, writing:

I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion. This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census.

It can not.

—Munir Sheikh

The National Citizens Coalition and the Fraser Institute support the change. The strongly libertarian National Citizens Coalition, which claims a membership of between 40,000 and 45,000, is continuing to campaign against the mandatory long form census.

Groups against the change come from all parts of the political spectrum, and include the Federation of Canadian Municipalities; Atlantic Provinces Economic Council; City of Toronto; National Statistics Council; Canadian Jewish Congress; Evangelical Fellowship of Canada; Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops; Canadian Medical Association; Statistical Society of Canada; the American Statistical Association; Registered Nurses Association of Ontario; Canadian Conference of the Arts; and the governments of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba.

On July 19, 2010, representatives from several institutions signed a letter expressing their disapproval of the change, and their desire to speak to Clement to find another solution. The organizations represented were:

• Canadian Association for Business Economics
• Canadian Nurses Association
• Caledon Institute of Social Policy
• Canadian Institute of Planners
• Institute for Research on Public Policy
• Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants
• Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada
• Canadian Labour Congress
• Canada West Foundation
• United Way of Canada
• Glendon School of Public and International Affairs
• National Specialty Society for Community Medicine
• Environics Analytics
• The University of Toronto School of Public Policy and Governance and Rotman School of Management
• Nanos Research
• Canadian Public Health Association
• Canadian Association of University Teachers
• Canadian Council on Social Development
• Canadian Economic Association
• Toronto Board of Trade

A House of Commons industry committee special hearing on July 27, 2010, heard that during the previous census, out of approximately 12 million forms, 166 complaints were known to be received directly or indirectly. In answer to Clement's claim that those who don't fill out the census risk jail time, Jack Layton, leader of the national New Democratic Party, noted that in the entire history of the census, the government had not prosecuted and jailed a single person for failing to complete the census, and pointed out that the threat could be removed entirely by amending the legislation so that incarceration is no longer a penalty for refusal to complete the census. In response, the government announced plans to introduce legislation to remove the threat of jail time for anyone refusing to fill out any mandatory government surveys. As of yet, the Statistics Act has not been amended to change the penalties. It was last updated in 2005.

Some groups have argued that the decision was motivated by a wish to destroy a useful tool for social advocacy, by making it harder to identify and count disadvantaged groups. However, the Conservative government maintains that its reasoning for the cancellation is that they do not believe it is appropriate to force Canadians to divulge detailed personal information under threat of prosecution.

On October 20, 2010, Statistics Canada predicted that a voluntary long-form would result in a decline of total respondents from 94% to 50%. Consequentially, they expect a "substantial risk of non-response bias" and plans to " its data collection and other procedures to mitigate as much as possible against these risks." The response rate also led them to predict an increased risk of sampling errors, due to the fact that only 16% of the Canadian population would be surveyed, as opposed to 19% under a mandatory long-form similar to the one in 2006. The government announced in August 2010 that it would be spending 30 million dollars on a campaign aimed at increasing the response rate to the voluntary form but information released by Statistics Canada in December 2010 revealed that half of this money would be required for tasks unrelated to the promotional campaign.