:
It's 8:45. I call the meeting to order.
Good morning, everyone.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we're undertaking at this committee a study of the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census and its impact on women's equality in Canada.
We have witnesses with us from Statistics Canada. Rosemary Bender is the assistant chief statistician, social health and labour studies. Jane Badets is director general, census subject matter, social and demographic statistics. Marc Hamel is director general, census management office.
We also have, from Status of Women Canada, Sébastien Goupil, executive director, gender-based analysis and strategic policy branch. Erin Leigh is senior policy analyst, gender-based analysis and strategic policy branch.
Welcome, and thank you very much for coming this morning. The usual procedure is that each group has 10 minutes, so you can decide how you will divide up your 10 minutes for the presentation. Then we will be open for questions and answers.
We will begin with Statistics Canada and Ms. Badets.
:
We want to thank the committee for inviting Statistics Canada to appear today.
I will be reading from a prepared text.
In regard to the 2011 census and the national household survey, I would point out that on June 26, 2010, the census questions were published in the Canada Gazette and included the same eight questions as the 2006 short-form census.
Statistics Canada was asked to provide options for a voluntary survey. The government selected the option to conduct the voluntary survey called the national household survey.
On August 21, 2010, the census content was amended in the Canada Gazette, with two questions on language being added.
Regarding the 2011 census, the implementation of the census is progressing as planned, with the printing of questionnaires. All field offices are open and recruitment is also progressing as planned. The census will be in May, with census day on May 10, and early enumeration for northern and remote communities will be conducted in February and March of 2011. The same level of quality in past censuses will be produced, with an expected response rate of 98%. Tentative dissemination plans would see all census results released within 18 months of census day, with the first release of population and dwelling counts in February 2012.
In regard to the 2011 national household survey, which I'm going to refer to as the NHS, this will be the first time that Statistics Canada will conduct this voluntary survey. Statistics Canada will conduct and release the results of this survey applying the same methods and standards used in all of its surveys. The sample size for the NHS will be larger than that of the 2006 census long form: 4.5 million dwellings compared with the previously planned 2.9 million dwellings for a 2011 census long form. The NHS reference date of May 10 is the same as that for the census. The NHS will be conducted in the same timeframe as the census, with questionnaires targeted for delivery generally one month after the census. The NHS will make maximum use of the census infrastructure.
The implementation of the NHS is progressing as planned. The questionnaires are currently being printed, and tentative release plans would see the first release of results in early 2013.
Due to significant changes in methodology between the 2006 census long form and the national household survey, we anticipate that comparisons between the two data sources will be difficult. The extent to which this will be an issue will not be known until we have collected and evaluated the survey results. Statistics Canada is confident, however, that the survey will produce usable and useful information that will meet the needs of many users.
The content of the NHS includes most of the questions that were asked in the 2006 census long form, with some new questions added and modifications made to some other questions.
A question on unpaid work will not be asked in the NHS. Statistics Canada recognizes the importance of collecting data on unpaid work. This information was introduced to the census in 1996 and was introduced to various cycles of the general social survey, in particular to the time use cycles beginning in 1992.
The possibility of removing the unpaid work questions from the long-form census was raised in the 2011 content report released in July 2008. A series of highly focused consultations were undertaken in the summer and fall of 2008. These consultations specifically asked about retaining the unpaid work questions to better understand if there were specifically a policy, program, or legislative need for this information from the census, or if other data sources would be a better source of information on this important topic.
Based on feedback from these consultations, it appeared that little policy, analytic, or academic work had been produced from the unpaid work questions in the census. Further, there appeared to be little current use of the small area of data that could be produced from these questions in the census. Statistics Canada was advised that greater use was being made of the detailed set of questions available in the general social survey than of the census unpaid work questions.
Because of the vast amount of information collected through its 24-hour diary, the general social survey on time use, conducted in 2010, 2005, 1998, and 1992, is the most comprehensive and appropriate survey from which to obtain information about unpaid household activities. For example, the general social survey collects much more detailed information than would be found in the census. It contains additional information, such as about activities both inside and outside the home, simultaneous activities, and elder care. It features a time diary and episode files. The episodes of unpaid work, the time of day these activities are done, how many episodes there are in an average day, and the time spent on these activities can be examined.
In weighing the support to legislation, program and policy needs, data quality, respondent burden, and alternative data sources, the decision was made to not include the unpaid work questions in the 2009 census test questionnaire, the last large-scale test of the content for the 2011 census.
Statistics Canada recognizes the importance of data on unpaid work, which requires a detailed set of questions to capture the range of activities, both inside and outside the home, that could be considered to be unpaid household activities. Thus, this information would continue to be collected, on a five-year cycle, from the general social survey, which has proven to be an effective way to collect information required by data users, with results for the same reference period to be made available.
Thank you.
:
Thank you for the invitation to come and appear with the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to share with you the work of the Agency in promoting equality for women, and women's full participation in the economic, social and democratic life of Canada.
In order to achieve this, Status of Women Canada is committed to drawing on data, information and analysis that can allow us to understand how far women have come, and what work still remains to be done to ensure women's equality and full participation.
Having high-quality, rigorous data on a range of issues related to diverse women's circumstances and experiences in Canadian society is essential to measuring progress and identifying areas of further change.
[English]
To this end, Status of Women Canada is providing financial support, in collaboration with other federal organizations, to Statistics Canada to publish the sixth edition of Women in Canada. This publication was launched in 1985 and has provided a comprehensive statistical portrait of women in the country every five years since. Electronic release of the publication will begin this December on a chapter-by-chapter basis for the next year. As with previous editions, Status of Women Canada is relying on the expertise in data collection and analysis at Statistics Canada to publish this publication.
[Translation]
The 12 chapters of Women in Canada provide invaluable information on a range of topics including women's health, education, economic well-being, paid work, family status and unpaid work, demographics, and women and the criminal justice system.
A central feature of the publication is to have chapters that look specifically at the situation of women from different groups including Aboriginal women, immigrant women, seniors, visible minority women, and women with a participation or activity limitation.
Women are not a homogenous group, and there are differences among women, and not just between women and men. This understanding is a core element of how we do our work, as Status of Women Canada wants to ensure that all women are making progress, and not just some.
[English]
Understanding that the intersection of women's gender with other aspects of their identity influences their scope for contributing to and benefiting from Canada's economic, social, and democratic landscape is critical to ensuring that women in all their diversity are making progress in society.
As well, this past June, the federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for the status of women decided to update the 2006 Measuring Violence Against Women: Statistical Trends report, which is also produced by Statistics Canada. This report provides indicators of violence against women, including the prevalence and severity of violence against women, the impact of violence against women, the risk factors associated with violence against women, institutional and community-based responses, and victims' use of services.
Having a strong set of data that is gender disaggregated is also fundamental to fulfilling the government-wide commitment to performing and entrenching the practice of gender-based analysis, otherwise known as GBA. GBA is the process of examining a policy, program, or initiative for its impact on women and men in all their diversity. It provides a snapshot in time that captures the realities of women and men affected by a particular issue. Through systematic use of GBA, policy analysts, researchers, program officers, service providers, evaluators, and decision-makers alike are able to improve their work by being more responsive to the specific needs and circumstances of women and to attain better results for Canadians.
[Translation]
Status of Women Canada provides the necessary leadership and support for the federal family to implement this analysis, and promotes the collection and analysis of gender-disaggregated data. This includes the collection of baseline data when there are information gaps. Gender-disaggregated baseline data has a critical role in challenging policy and program areas that are perceived as gender-neutral, and enabling gender-based analysis of areas where the gender considerations may seem less obvious.
Status of Women Canada is committed to making available and drawing upon relevant and rigorous data and analysis to inform our work. As data users, we regularly turn to our colleagues at Statistics Canada for guidance on the subject of which data sources best illuminate the circumstances of women in a variety of spheres.
As data users, not producers, and at this early stage in the decision, we are not in a position to comment on the impact of eliminating the long-form census, and would defer to our colleagues at Statistics Canada, and other data experts, on this matter.
We will continue to seek out advice on which data sources provide the most telling and rigorous information on the status of women. The information we use comes from a broad range of sources including, but not limited to the census, such as the labour force survey, the Canadian community health survey, the survey of labour and income dynamics, uniform crime reporting survey, the transition home survey, the victim services survey, the homicide survey, and more.
Status of Women Canada relies on data and analysis to understand how women are making progress, and to identify areas where further work is required.
Thank you again for inviting Status of Women Canada to appear before the committee.
And thank you for being here this morning.
I have a number of questions I'd like to ask. As the chair has said, there are only seven minutes, so if your answers could be brief, I would appreciate it.
To Statistics Canada, you made the comment in your remarks that the usability of data will be questionable--my word--given the lack of a mandatory requirement to fill in the form. I'd like some expansion on that.
I'd also like to know a little bit about the consultation process. Who was consulted? I'm going to ask you, through the chair, if it would be possible to table the responses you have received on the consultation process, with some indication of where they came from. That would be very helpful and very useful to us.
I want to focus on question 33, which, as you're undoubtedly aware, is of significant concern to this committee and to many women we've talked to throughout the country.
Why was this removed? On what basis was it removed? Who was consulted on the removal of question 33? Why was only that question removed rather than refined? You've left questions on education and transportation that were expanded for clarification, but for some reason the decision to remove question 33 was made.
Why were questions 34 and 44 not kept, which also deal with unpaid work, particularly in light of a family business or a farm? What is the biggest difference between these two types of unpaid work that would lead to them being treated differently in 2011?
I'll stop there, but I've got more questions, if we have time.
:
I'll just comment on the consultations to begin with. We do extensive consultations leading up to each census. We start about three or four years prior to the census and do consultations. We put out a consultation guide. It's on our website. It's quite a public process. We consult with key data users. That's for all of the content.
The space on the census questionnaire is limited. We have to weigh a number of factors: the need for the information, whether there's policy or legislative need; the respondent burden; data quality; costs and operational considerations; and alternative data sources.
So we went through that process, and we did have feedback on unpaid work. In particular, in the next step we went forward and did a series of very highly focused consultations specifically about unpaid work. You asked about whom we consulted on that. Certainly, we talked to the governments of our provinces and territories, as Statistics Canada does have territorial and provincial focal points. As well, we had a meeting with federal department managers from a number of departments with interests in the census information. We also did a follow-up and a specific call with provincial and territorial status of women offices, and that was organized by Status of Women Canada. Then also, as part of all of our consultations on the census, we talked to our advisory committees. We have a National Statistics Council, and particularly on this one there was an advisory committee on social conditions, which has advised us on gender work over time.
Then we also looked at the actual use of the unpaid work questions in the census. The need for information from small areas is really important in the census. What we heard back is that there was very, very little use of the census unpaid work questions but that there was a great deal of use of the general social survey questions, which are very extensive. The feedback we got and the advice we were given was that it was those questions from the general social survey that were providing the most comprehensive picture of unpaid household activities, for a number of reasons. It was also available in the same timeframe, and it was these questions from the general social survey that were being used.
So it was all of these considerations on the table that we looked at.
In terms of the other questions, we heard back that those questions were being used, the small area data, for example. There was, of course, quite a bit of use of the subsequent questions on education and labour, and there was a need for that information on the small area scale.
So those were the types of processes we went through. That was the information we got back.
I think that addresses those questions.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
To Statistics Canada: as you are aware, last March, here in the House of Commons, we adopted a motion that states the following:
That this House highlight the importance of the so-called “invisible” unpaid work done by parents and caregivers on behalf of their children and aging family members by creating the “Invisible Work Day”…
On the one hand, we are adopting a motion, but on the other, we are abolishing the mandatory census and making it voluntary. A number of stakeholders, that you surely all know, mainly Aboriginal groups, universities and municipalities, recognize the importance of the data that was collected through that document. We risk losing data worth billions of dollars. Surely you know that, in both the provincial and federal economy, all the invisible unpaid work is worth billions of dollars. To my understanding, we are going to tell Canadians that we are now forgetting about this completely. This is what everyone is currently saying, and you're saying it too.
You seem to be saying that this data is now distributed through various surveys. But we are wondering about the relevance of what you said regarding the reliability of the data. How will we be able to establish a comparison with the information collected in the past? The information we get will be completely different because these elements will no longer be included in the questionnaire.
The next question is for Status of Women Canada. You do not question this, but you say that it is impossible for you to say at this point what the impact of losing this information would be on all the legislation that could possibly come into force and where this issue will have a major impact. That much is clear.
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Yes. In particular, the general social survey is a survey we do annually. And it is on different topics, such as, for example, families or victimization.
One of those cycles is the time use cycle, and that's conducted every five years. We started in 1992. The time use diary collects information on a 24-hour diary, so it's a little bit burdensome for respondents. We ask them what activities they're doing throughout the day and how much time they're spending on them. We ask about primary activities, and now we're starting to ask about secondary or simultaneous activities as well. For example, the GSS time use diary would capture someone making supper, but at the same time they're doing child care. That's the kind of information it collects, so you can look at the extent to which people are working on unpaid household activities, whether it's elder care, child care, volunteering, or looking after family members. And you can see over a 24-hour time period how much time they spent. That set of information is in that particular cycle.
As well, we ask sets of questions similar to what's asked in the census. But we ask about unpaid household activities, such as caring for seniors, not only inside the household but outside the home as well. That's why it's a more comprehensive set of information. It's just captures the whole range of household activities that can be undertaken by Canadians in any time period.
We've done that cycle every five years. We're just doing a cycle right now, in 2010, and we'll release the results in the spring of 2011. That's a fair bit of data with over 20 years of data.
:
Thank you very much, Ms. Mathyssen.
I would like to remind the witnesses that there are requests now for two sets of data. One is for Ms. Neville with regard to consultations, and now Ms. Mathyssen has asked for copies of memos. Could you please send that information on to the clerk for us? Thank you very much.
We have 15 minutes left. If everyone is really good, that could give us two minutes each on a round of four people. That means you're going to have to be crisp and I'm going to have to cut you off, so there is that option.
What I would like to suggest is that we quickly go into a round of two minutes. No, we cannot do three, Ms. Neville, just two. Otherwise, we'll have our next lot of witnesses waiting.
Go ahead, Ms. Simson.
This is just a comment to our presenters. I'd really like to get some definitions of “unpaid work”, because in my household, if I decide to undertake a painting project in one of our bedrooms, to me it's a hobby; if my husband has to do it, it's definitely work. I look at that and say the definitions need to be a little more refined, because my definition doesn't meet the same definition as my husband's.
I have a question for you about changing data collection in other jurisdictions. What we're seeing around the world is an interest in many jurisdictions in changing how we are collecting our data. I was doing a little review on this in getting ready for this meeting, and I was interested to find that in Britain they're saying that data users want a greater range of statistics to be available more frequently to provide an accurate picture of population change. What you're saying is that in the provision of these 25,000 surveys that you're doing on an annual basis, we are getting much richer data that is going to be available on a more timely basis for the data users in providing them with information. Is that correct?
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Thank you very much, Ms. Bender.
Before we move on and before I thank the witnesses, I have a question I would like to ask as chair.
You say that you believe, and that you've heard from people, that doing the general social survey will give you the kinds of data you require, and Status of Women Canada has suggested that they will be depending on Statistics Canada for good information on unpaid work. Given that your general social survey looks at metropolitan areas, how are you going to understand the difference between rural and urban, given that your sample size is 25,000 and that it's a telephone survey? There are many people now who do not utilize telephones in the same way. How are you going to be able to get that information? That's my first question.
Second, we know that the issue of unpaid work came about when Canada brought it forward in 1995 at the Beijing conference. Canada has been pushing very hard for unpaid work questions to be put into general statistics in many countries of the world; therefore, how are we meeting our United Nations and CIDA obligations when we do not ask questions on unpaid work in our Statistics Canada survey?
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Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this committee is undertaking a study of the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census and its impact on women's equality in Canada.
I'd like to welcome: Ivan Fellegi, former head of Statistics Canada; the Association féminine d'éducation et d'action sociale, with Céline Duval, president, and Madeleine Bourget, vice-president; and the Canadian Federation of University Women, with Samantha Spady, communications coordinator, and Robin Jackson, executive director.
The rules are simple. I know that Mr. Fellegi knows them by now. You have 10 minutes as a group, so you can decide how you divide up your 10 minutes. After your 10-minute presentation, we will begin a question and answer section. Because we have only an hour in which to undertake this, I will give you a two-minute signal so that you can tighten up your presentation, know what to leave out at the end, and get a sense of where you're going.
I shall begin with Mr. Fellegi.
Welcome, Mr. Fellegi. It's nice to see you again.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair. It's good to be here. I'm very pleased that I've been invited.
I'll be talking about the national household survey. My views on that issue are well known. I just want to say why I've chosen what I have to say.
First of all, it is because of the certainty of serious biases affecting the resulting data. The percentage response rate to the traditional long-form census was in the mid- to high nineties. Statistics Canada's working assumption about the response rate to the voluntary national household survey is 50%.
This would not matter much if the lost responses were evenly distributed over all population groups, but we know this is not the case. Past experience from Canada and elsewhere shows that underprivileged groups, such as aboriginal people, new immigrants, visible minorities, and, generally, people with low incomes, will respond at a disproportionately low rate--and no extra sampling will compensate for this disproportion.
But these are not the only people likely to be under-counted. Youths generally are likely to be under-counted. So will working mothers with serious time pressures on them, and others about whom we can only speculate.
In fact, this is precisely the main problem. Bias is so pernicious because, in the overwhelming number of cases, neither its magnitude nor even its direction can be ascertained. Statistics Canada states--and they are right--that the results will be useful for “many purposes”. The trouble is that we don't know now, and we will not know after the survey, what are the cases for which they are safe to use and what are the ones for which they are not.
This leads me to my second point. Since we know that the data can be seriously biased, but we will not know which data are affected and by how much, we will regrettably, but quite appropriately, be suspicious of them all. That will be a tragic outcome, because up until now we were able to focus on the substantive issues of policy, having taken the data for granted. Following the national household survey, we can spend just as much time arguing about the data as we can debating the issues of concern.
Coming to my last point, with a 50% response rate, biases of five to ten percentage points can easily distort any estimate, which is serious enough if you want to know the number of people in a certain group, but it can be devastating when our focus is on how the number changed over the last five years.
Indeed, human populations evolve slowly. A change of two to three percentage points over five years is often regarded as major. But clearly, if the bias can be two to four times as big--that is, five to ten percentage points--the real change can be grossly under- or overestimated. Not only will we be in doubt about the magnitude of the estimated change, but even its direction can be reversed by the bias.
To give you a relevant example, I have no idea how, after 2011, we will estimate the change over the last five years in the earning differential between women and men doing similar work and having similar qualifications. The same applies to estimates of the change in the education gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal groups, whether we are getting more or less successful in economically integrating our new immigrants, and so on.
The issues are significant, and I am concerned about the passing time.
Thank you for your attention.
Last July, immediately after the Canadian government had announced its intention to remove the obligation for Canadians to fill out the long-form census questionnaire in 2011, AFEAS, like stakeholders from the scientific, municipal and business circles, protested against this underhanded decision.
In August, during the annual meeting of the association, 450 women representing the 12,000 members of AFEAS in Quebec felt compelled once more to express their complete dissatisfaction with the decision that threatens to deprive organizations like ours of reliable data for supporting their action plans and demands for equality between men and women.
This summer, there was a real outcry in Quebec against this measure. The Coalition québécoise pour l'avenir du recensement was born. AFEAS is one of the members together with organizations from all areas: politics, university, research, think tanks, demography, genealogy, the francophonie, business, teaching, history, municipal administration. The Quebec government has even adopted a motion opposed to removing this obligation. Similar opposition was encountered across Canada. This summer, the Canoe website reported that more than 360 groups, including the leading statisticians in the country, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the Canadian Medical Association, university researchers and the Anglican Church, asked the government to reverse its decision.
Removing the obligation to fill out a long-form questionnaire will deprive all sectors of our organization of valid and solid data. No voluntary survey can yield results as reliable as a mandatory census questionnaire. The Chief Statistician said so himself when he resigned:
I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue... the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census. It cannot.
A voluntary survey will produce skewed, unreliable and unrepresentative data that will make it impossible for us to compare it with data from previous years.
The long-form census provided solid statistics that allowed women's groups to conduct gender-based analyses on education, family, work and income. These types of analyses are vital to developing sound action plans in order to eliminate inequalities.
AFEAS is particularly concerned about the fact that statistics on invisible work will no longer be available. In fact, all questions on unpaid work, or so-called invisible work, from the new long-form census were withdrawn. AFEAS had only succeeded in getting questions aimed at measuring this invisible work, especially work done for children or loved ones with reduced independence, as part of the long form for the last three censuses, in 1996, 2001 and 2006. The data compiled allowed us to measure the quantity of work, especially the way in which it was divided between men and women. Our analyses along with supporting statistics have shown that the economy relies to a large degree on this invisible work, which keeps the social and family life together allowing individuals to have paid jobs. The work-family balance is a fundamental issue.
How can eliminating these questions be justified when last April, the Parliament of Canada unanimously adopted a motion declaring the first Tuesday in April the Invisible Work Day? As a result, Canada became the first country in the world to create this day. How can this work be recognized if we cannot measure it?
From now on, it will be difficult for Canada to say that it respects the Beijing Declaration that it signed in 1995 at the World Conference on Women, stating that it was convinced of the following:
Equal rights, opportunities and access to resources, equal sharing of responsibilities for the family by men and women, and a harmonious partnership between them are critical to their well-being and that of their families as well as to the consolidation of democracy...
How can we share something that we refuse to measure?
Depriving organizations of reliable data that allow them to support their arguments in all sectors is the same as muzzling or destroying their work of assessing Canadians' needs.
Non-profit organizations like AFEAS need reliable data and objectives to understand problems well and to be able to change mindsets and policies. Statistics Canada must have the means to publish such data and make them available.
Thank you.
The Canadian Federation of University Women is a non-partisan, voluntary, self-funded organization of close to 10,000 members--women university graduates, students, and associate members in 113 clubs across Canada--that works to improve the status of women and human rights, education, social justice, and peace.
CFUW holds special consultative status with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and belongs to the education sector of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. CFUW is the largest of the 67 affiliates of the International Federation of University Women.
CFUW calls on committee members to support the reinstatement of the mandatory long-form census. The mandatory long-form census is a critical tool to monitor the status of women and to formulate policy to advance women's equality. CFUW calls for the inclusion of census questions on unpaid work. CFUW members are aware that the mandatory long-form census is a critical tool for governments, agencies, and civil society to monitor and understand what is happening in Canadian society.
The gendered impacts are especially important to emphasize. All of the markers of how women are faring will be less reliable and impossible to track and measure from previous years if the mandatory long-form census is cancelled. The lack of reliable information will severely reduce the amount of effective research and gender analysis. Both are crucial in order to address gender inequality.
CFUW is concerned that we will lose a tool to measure and track women's equality. Statistics have told us the story of women's inequality in Canada. We know what gains have been made and where there is still much work to be done. For example, using information from Statistics Canada, we know that twice as many women as men become victims of spousal violence, or 61% for females compared to 32% for males. The same analysis found that almost four times as many women as men were killed by a current or former spouse.
We know that 81% of single-parent households are headed by a woman. Of these households, the poverty rate for single mothers under 65 is 42.4%, compared to 19.3% of single fathers in the same group. We know that a lot has been done to reduce the poverty of seniors in general, but that poverty for single senior women is persistent, and these women are twice as likely as are senior men to be impoverished.
Because of reliable and accurate statistics, we know that poverty in Canada is gendered. Of the nearly four million people in Canada who live below the low-income cut-off after tax, 54% are women.
Using this information, women's organizations such as CFUW and others monitor and report on how women are doing and put forward policy solutions to the problems we find. This data is also used to measure the efficacy of initiatives and programs to combat poverty, barriers to full participation in the workplace, and violence, and to determine how they can be improved. It is obvious from the preceding statistics that women are more likely than are men to experience violence and poverty, and it is imperative that we know by how much and know which segments of society and which regions are affected.
Once this data is no longer of the same quality and can no longer be compared to data for previous years, data critical to addressing gender inequality will be lost.
Using the parliamentary testimony of former chief statisticians of Statistics Canada, Dr. Munir Sheikh and Dr. Ivan Fellegi, and briefs from the Statistical Society of Canada and the National Statistics Council, we have concluded that the changes will undoubtedly affect both the quality of data collected and the ability to compare data from one year to the next due to the inherent bias of voluntary participation.
In his July 27, 2010, testimony to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, Dr. Fellegi alerted the committee that “they”--that is, the census after the change from mandatory to voluntary participation--“really become unusable for purposes of making comparisons in terms of what has happened since the last census”.
In this meeting, Dr. Fellegi and Dr. Sheikh also discussed how the existing voluntary surveys would be less reliable because they would not be able to test them against the census data.
CFUW cannot support the cancellation of the mandatory long form, as it makes census data unusable. Comparisons from year to year are the cornerstone of monitoring and working for progress of women's equality.
CFUW believes unpaid work must be quantified and valued. CFUW has supported measures to quantify the value of unpaid work to the economy and to take account of this contribution to economic productivity in policy decisions.
However, the removal of question 33 in the 2006 census, which is about unpaid work, is a step backwards. Using census data, it has been calculated that women do two-thirds of unpaid work, accounting for around 30% to 45% of Canada's gross domestic product. This contribution is significant, and with unpaid work including care work involving children and elders, this is an important figure to monitor.
Given the aging population and no current commitments for increased numbers of child care spaces, women will continue to take on the majority of care work in this country. Elder care in particular has been shown to have negative effects on the financial health of women and also on the mental and physical health of women. Without information on this issue, we will not be able to understand the effects and consequences of unpaid work on women.
The removal of the question on unpaid work creates a barrier to the ability to monitor and to value the contribution of unpaid voluntary and care work. CFUW proposes that the Standing Committee on the Status of Women recommend the reinstatement of the mandatory long-form census and the inclusion of the question on unpaid work for the 2011 census.
These changes, if not reversed, will have a detrimental effect on the capacity of governments at all levels and of civil society to respond to and track changes to women's lives as they relate to policy decisions. As a result of these changes, we will no longer be able to compare census data to past years' results, making comparison and tracking of both progress and regression futile.
To improve the information available on time use, CFUW recommends that the following be included in the 2011 census: questions on unpaid work; questions on care of the disabled; and the expansion of the numbers on elder care that can be reported in census questions. To respond and adapt to the changes in demographics and women's lives, we must have the information to do so. If we cannot trust or compare this information, working towards women's equality will be a difficult pursuit.
As an equality-seeking organization, CFUW encourages the government to reverse this decision, on the basis that the impacts on gender are too great to ignore. As inequality persists, we must continue to have information to understand how to overcome it. Without the statistics that tell the story, we will have nothing except unreported and unaddressed inequality.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm going to try to share my time with my colleague.
I have a number of questions, but I want to thank all of you for being here today.
Mr. Fellegi, I know that in your role as chief statistician you were instrumental in promoting in the statistics the agenda of women's unpaid work, gender equality, and violence against women, and we all thank you for those efforts.
I have two questions. We heard from Statistics Canada at the end of their presentation just before this. I think I have the quote correct. They say they will not get the same data but will meet the usability requirements. I would welcome your comment on that, which is of considerable concern.
My other questions are to all three groups. The consultation guide, as I understand it, did not mention unpaid work in any way. On the unpaid work, as I understand it, the issue came not from public consultations but largely from private consultations that were held. I'm curious to know whether women's groups got any notice from Statistics Canada, in any way, on the issue of unpaid work and the fact that the removal of question 33 was under consideration, because it seems that it was not part of the overall consultation process. I'll open that up to you.
Dr. Fellegi.
:
The question about usability.... As I mentioned in my opening comments, Statistics Canada said--and I absolutely implicitly trust them--that it will meet many user needs. There's no question about that. The trouble is we won't know which ones and to what extent, because bias is unknowable. They accept in some special circumstances.... Well, there is some independent data against which I won't verify, but that's rarely the case.
So that's the fundamental problem and that's what really causes my concern.
As much as it affects data on the status of anything, whatever it is--we mean aboriginals, immigrants, youth, the construction industry, whatever--it affects infinitely more changes. Because there is a new method proposed to be introduced in 2011, which is a voluntary survey with about half the expected response rate of the compulsory one, we will have even relatively minor biases hide the estimated changes. So the estimated changes of whatever--whether it's status of women, or aboriginals, or immigrants, or youth, whatever--will be really doubtful.
My last point is again--I made it in my opening comment--that doubt is pernicious, because it will shift the debate from the underlying issues to whether the data can be trusted for this purpose. That's what I'm really concerned about. The next five years will be spent debating the data as opposed to the underlying issues they are supposed to reveal.
:
Well, let me just go back. I can comment about the GSS, because actually I was the father of it. I initiated it when I became chief statistician because I found that generally our social statistics were woefully underdeveloped, and in a way the general social survey was really a poor person's answer to the paucity of social information generally. Instead of devoting the survey to any single topic--whether it's education, or family, or health, or immigration, or whatever social issue--we decided to try to include a rotating program. Once every five years we would come back to the same topics.
That was the first decision: to try to spread it as widely as possible.
Second, we could afford only a relatively small sample size. We were hoping that the interest generated by the GSS data would result in more sponsors coming forward, putting their money on the table, and saying, “We want this information; can you do A, B, and C?” To some extent that worked, but not nearly sufficiently.
The GSS was really as much a teaser as it was an attempt to answer every question. At the same time, it has answered a lot of questions, and it has resulted in extremely interesting and useful analysis, but a survey is typically an inter-censual indicator; most of the time the census provides the detailed picture once every five years. They are complementary in their roles, and that complementary aspect works very well between the GSS and the long form.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning, Mr. Fellegi. You are being quoted at great length today. Your data is recognized. You are saying some interesting things, including the fact that underprivileged groups do not answer the questions. But, in my opinion, with the voluntary questionnaire, the short-form questionnaire, they will answer them even less. So the results will be distorted.
You are saying that the data could be skewed, but we would like to know which data and to what extent. We will find out later, in a few years.
We are just wondering. In your opinion, why have we decided to opt for the voluntary short-form questionnaire? Is the government really saving money, or, as AFEAS said, are organizations rather being deprived of reliable data that would allow them to move forward with their demands?
:
I cannot, of course, speculate. I wasn't there, and even if I had been there, I wouldn't be allowed to speculate about why the decision was made, so I am in no position.
I can make two comments, though, on your question.
First, it certainly wasn't to save money, because my understanding is that this exercise ends up costing $30 million more and results in a great deal less usable data. It certainly was not to save money.
The other little point I want to make is that, as you mentioned, we might find out years from now whether the data are biased. I'm afraid we might not find out even then, because bias is inherently not knowable. Some bias we will know, because there will be contradictory information from independent sources, but much of the bias will be hidden. That's just in the nature of bias.
:
Thank you. That will allow me to talk to Ms. Duval.
I would also like to recognize Ms. Jackson for her work. In my view, the fact that university women are willing to help other women is a great commitment.
I would like to congratulate AFEAS on all its efforts to achieve equality between men and women. We are very concerned today. As we know, equality between men and women includes women's financial independence.
Ms. Duval, by thinking about all the statistics on unpaid work, about all the work that you did, we could say that not being able to access these statistics would be a major loss. We only have to think about children and caregivers. Women do two-thirds of this work. Caregivers' work will increase because of the aging population.
How do you plan on moving the major issue of unpaid work forward?
:
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to meet with us today.
As you know, the debate about whether it is better to use a long-form or short-form questionnaire, mandatory or voluntary, is not new. As a woman and single mother of two grown-up girls, I was sometimes bothered by some of the questions. But that's just my personal opinion.
I have a letter here, which is not from the governing party, but from people who asked themselves the same question. It is written in English and addressed to the former Minister of Industry, Mr. Bernier. I am going to read you an excerpt:
[English]
I have received a few letters of complaint from constituents concerning the length and detail of the 2006 census.
They are primarily concerned with the great detail of personal information they are required to fill out and therefore potential invasion of privacy.
[Translation]
We did not write that. A number of MPs asked themselves those questions.
This summer, when the government decided to have a voluntary census, some people called me because they didn't understand the difference between census and survey. We know that it is possible to get data from surveys. In fact, we often receive surveys at home, and you know as well as I do that we can get data from sources other than a census. For some people, a census is often just a way to find out where you come from and who you are.
I have a question for you. There were questions in the 2006 census that were marked as mandatory or voluntary. For example, if we want to know whether an individual studied a language other than the one spoken at home, is that a mandatory or voluntary question?
Can we tell the difference? Do most people who answer know whether the answers to these questions are mandatory or voluntary? I, Sylvie Boucher, would personally—not as an MP, but as a woman—decline to answer some of the questions, not because I do not want to fill out the census, but because I feel my privacy is being invaded. But I am very comfortable with the new questionnaire. I have a copy of the new 2011 census here. As human beings, we are actually always afraid when something new comes along.
How can we know if these data will be useful or not? To my knowledge, people often feel obligated to answer if it is mandatory. But if it is voluntary, how can we know that people won't answer the questions?
Ms. Céline Duval: Would you like me to answer?
Mrs. Sylvie Boucher: Yes, please. That is why I am asking you the question, Madam.
:
They will answer, because when it is mandatory, there is someone who will help them to fill out the form.
I've already been involved in the census, and, when someone is not able to fill out the form, we provide volunteers to help them.
Mrs. Sylvie Boucher: Oh, really?
Ms. Céline Duval: Yes. I was a volunteer myself, so I know that it's being done. It is possible that we might find it long at first. It is true that there is a big difference between eight questions and 80 or so questions. That does not take the same amount of time.
But we must often pay people to do the public or social surveys. So a non-profit organization where funding was cut—including the $100,000 by Status of Women Canada last year—cannot afford to conduct a survey.
It is interesting to hear you say that, when the form is mandatory, someone will help people to fill it out.
Ms. Céline Duval: Yes.
Ms. Sylvie Boucher: So, if someone wants to fill it out, not because it is mandatory, but because it is private and they want to answer, there won't be anyone to help them to fill it out?
Ms. Céline Duval: I don't understand your question.
Ms. Sylvie Boucher: In fact, if someone really wants to fill out the census, they will find someone to help them and it would be the same thing as if it were mandatory.
You are saying, and I agree with you, that some people in minority communities will not answer or did not answer the questions because they were either illiterate or they had another reason. So I feel that, if someone really wants to answer the questions, they will still find a way.
I want to talk to Ms. Jackson. You talked about the fact that we see poverty among senior women as persistent. We have evidence of that. This committee has had a number of studies in regard to the economic security of senior women. We have discovered that because they have had sporadic work or unpaid work, the CPP they receive is very low and OAS and GIS put them well below the low-income line.
We are in the midst of a study in regard to non-traditional work. One of the issues that came up in that study was that Statistics Canada evaluated that women dropped out of apprenticeship programs more often, not because of financial reasons or a better job offer but because of family responsibilities--in other words, unpaid work.
It seems that this is pivotal in terms of how, if we're going to address the reality of poverty among senior women in the future, we have to have this information.
I wonder if you could comment on that.
:
Sorry, Irene, you can't get that in. I'm sorry, you're all done.
This is the end of our question and answer segment. I want to thank our witnesses for coming.
Before the witnesses leave, though, I would like to ask one quick question of Mr. Fellegi.
Over all of the years you have been at Statistics Canada, and since, what percentage of people have refused to answer the mandatory long-form census? That's the first question.
The second question is, what has happened to those people who have refused? What are their penalties? Did they do jail time? Did they have any huge number of penalties added to them? Can you answer that question in terms of percentage a year?
Thank you.