Immigrate to Canada focus on Canadian immigrant life: The new Canadian government recently announced that it will restore the mandatory long-form census. "Our plan to build an open and fair government begins with restoring the long-form census." The country's Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains and Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Jean-Yves Duclos recently stated together in Ottawa, "We are focused on evidence-based good governance."
Bains explained that Statistics Canada will roll out the census, which is conducted every 5 years, before the deadline of May 2, and that making the census mandatory will not incur additional costs. He confirmed that residents who fail to complete the census form may face criminal prosecution. This issue led the Harper government to make the decision to turn the 2011 census into a voluntary one.
In 2010, the Harper government cancelled the mandatory long-form census and replaced it with the voluntary National Household Survey. This move was very unpopular among social scientists, municipal and provincial governments, and business groups. However, last February, the Canadian Parliament rejected a proposal to restore the census put forward by former Liberal MP Ted Hsu.
The voluntary survey had a much lower response rate—only 68% compared to the over 90% response rate of the previous mandatory questionnaire—resulting in poor quality of the collected data. It also tended to exacerbate sampling bias. Response rates were lower among certain groups, including immigrant populations, Indigenous peoples, and low-income households. When the survey results were released in 2013, the country's statistics agency included a disclaimer that researchers should exercise caution when comparing this survey with previous census data.
Social scientists take this warning very seriously. "I haven't seen anyone use data from this survey in their research," said Miles Corak, an economist at the University of Ottawa and a former employee of the statistics agency. "For my own work, I stopped at the 2006 data and didn't even try to verify if the survey data was valid." According to Corak, if the government restores the mandatory long-form census, researchers might skip the 2011 survey or include it with a warning that the information cannot be trusted.
However, Corak hopes that the statistics agency will retain some of the innovative methods adopted while dealing with inferior data. For example, the agency has become more adept at collecting information electronically by utilizing administrative data from other government departments, such as tax records.