Canada’s census


Stephen Harper and the Conservative party are wrong to want to eliminate the compulsory long-form part of Canada's census.

The Conservatives want to replace the current system, where every five years 20 per cent of Canadians are randomly chosen to complete the long form, with a voluntary long form for up to 33 per cent.

Any statistician will tell you using a voluntary form for accurate statistical research is pure folly.

The fact that Munir Sheikh, chief statistician of Statistics Canada, and a highly respected civil servant for 30 years, has resigned over the issue speaks to the level of political interference in what is supposed to be a non-partisan branch of our government.

Here in Surrey, we continue to have one of the fastest growing cities in Canada. We have a wide ethnic diversity, perhaps matched only by Vancouver and Toronto. And Surrey is home to a socio-economic range which includes both the wealthiest and the poorest Canadians.

We need to be able to know the facts as they are, not just a guess from those willing to fill out the longer form.

Other levels of government rely on StatsCan information to make important decisions about public and private transportation, schools, police and fire services, social programs, immigrants services, libraries, parks, and recreation.

Businesses, charities and educators will all use this information to decide where to expand, whether to relocate, or maintain the status quo.

New businesses in our community use StatsCan to project location, product and client base. Home builders, who are a large part of the economic growth in Surrey, use the data to determine the type of housing needed and location.

The Conservatives' claim that Canadians are concerned about privacy is a smokescreen. StatsCan has a world-renowned reputation, developed over generations, for providing meaningful statistical information from its census while maintaining the privacy of individual Canadians.

If the compulsory long-form is eliminated, Stephen Harper's Conservatives would base their political decisions on their partisan agenda rather than statistics and facts.

This is yet another example of Stephen Harper's Conservatives putting their ideology before good government.

Jasbir Sandhu