Itchy Fingers–Junior Boys

 

Yesterday, while putting together my data set for my thesis, I realized that if the Canadian long-form census had always been voluntary, my research would have been severely compromised. And it set my off.

Most of you will probably remember the controversy recently over replacing the mandatory long-form census with a voluntary one. There was a strong push to keep the long form mandatory (for the randomly selected 20% of Canadians who receive it) but, despite the head of Statistics Canada resigning over it, the long-form census will still be voluntary for the 2016 census.

This sounds boring but it’s important. I’m sure most people already know this with all the press coverage it got but the difference between a mandatory and voluntary census isn’t trivial. It’s the difference between having a random sample of 20% of Canadians which represent 100% Canadians, to getting a hodge-podge of Canadians who definitely don’t accurately represent the rest Canada. People who, if given the choice, will fill out the long form census are very different from those that won’t which will bias the results towards the people who fill out the form (who tend to be richer). The information the will result from a voluntary long form census will be unfit for research. You’ll get by fine without my research (although it could impact the well-being of some chronic disease suffers), but the sum total of research that will be affected by this, health research, economics research, sociological research, political research, will be huge. It’s one of those things that makes you question, “do these government guys actually have any clue about what they’re doing?” and in this case the answer is no (unless you think about it in terms of them pandering to their base, then the answer is yes but it’s still no to impact this will have on the country).

And all for what? Privacy? Are you kidding me? Click here and enter your postal code. That is the most detailed publicly available census data there is. Can you find yourself in there? I know everything there is to know about myself, I know where I fit in each and every category and there is no way I can pick myself out. There is no privacy issue.