Vancouver Board of Trade expresses “grave concern” to Tony Clement over long-form census

The Vancouver Board of Trade has sent the following letter to Minister of Industry Tony Clement:

August 4, 2010

The Honourable Tony Clement, PC, MP
Minister of Industry
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A OA6

Mr. Wayne Smith,
Acting Chief Statistician of Canada
Business and Trade Statistics
Statistics Canada
150 Tunney’s Pasture Driveway
Ottawa, Ontario K1A OT6

Dear Sirs:

Reference: Mandatory Canadian Census

On behalf of The Vancouver Board of Trade’s over 5,500 members, we are writing to express our grave concern over the government’s decision to replace Canada’s long form census with a voluntary questionnaire called the National Household Survey.

We have four areas of concern: data quality; cost; process; and of particular importance to our members, the impact this decision will have on small and medium-sized business enterprises (SME’s) which, as the Minister knows, represent the majority of businesses in Canada.

Data Quality

Ӣ Data quality is the prime requirement of all analysis and cannot be realized, in a national survey, without an extremely high response rate. A long form mandatory census is the only way of ensuring continued success in these areas. Voluntary surveys, although reliable to a degree, do not provide the same level data quality as the compulsory long form census.

Ӣ Business owners, health professionals, educators, essential service providers, and representatives from all levels of government rely on a consistent level of data quality for decision-making pertaining to the allocation and location of existing resources, the timing of new initiatives, and long-term planning. A shortfall of reliable data will significantly compromise decision-making in all of these areas.

Ӣ The data secured by the long form census provides additional socio-economic detail that is essential in determining regional and municipal level policy. The move to a voluntary questionnaire will dramatically limit the accurate tracking of long-term socio-economic trends. This situation will be further exacerbated by a lack of direct comparability with previous census data.

Ӣ Information secured from the compulsory long form census is used by business as a foundation for the development of other surveys conducted between regular census intakes. Without this critical foundation, the design and interpretation of data collected in secondary surveys will be far less effective.

Cost

Ӣ Achieving an appropriate response rate from a purely voluntary survey will be very challenging and almost certainly require more resources than retaining the current and compulsory long form census.

”¢ The subsequent cost to SME’s, in developing new data sources of their own, will pose a significant and unnecessary financial burden to them, during an extremely challenging business climate.

Ӣ High quality regional and municipal level data will be compromised, if not lost entirely, in many parts of Canada. This will necessitate the development of alternative data sources at enormous cost to individual municipalities. The return on their investment will be poor and, as in the business community, there will be a subsequent loss in meaningful analysis due to a lack of comparability.

Process

Ӣ As a business organization, we are extremely concerned that the decision to drop the compulsory long form census was made without consultation with the business, demographic, and economics communities.

Ӣ We are, in fact, surprised that a government generally diligent in consulting business on policy changes impacting the business community would neglect to their business input on an issue as impactful as a national census.

Impact

”¢ SME’s represent the vast majority of Canadian business and employ over 50 per cent of the Canadian workforce. They will be very hard hit by this decision.

”¢ Few SME’s, if any, have the resources to carry out independent surveys to overcome the data gap which will most assuredly result from the elimination of the compulsory long form census.

”¢ The ability of SME’s to make sound business decisions will be compromised without the continued reliability provided by information gathered in a mandatory long form census.

For the reasons we have outlined in this letter, we urge you to reinstate the long form census.

Sincerely,

Jason McLean
Chairman and Chief Elected Officer

cc: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, PC, MP, Prime Minister of Canada
The Honourable Stockwell Day, PC, MP, President of the Treasury Board
BC Members of Parliament
The Honourable Gordon Campbell, Premier for the Province of British Columbia
Mayor Gregor Robertson, City of Vancouver