Tuesday, August 03, 2010

What I learned from the Industry Committee's census hearings

Last week's Industry Committee meeting on the census was incredibly interesting, and I'm trying very hard to be patient with the fact that the transcript isn't up yet. (Because yes, I know that on top of everything else, every single word uttered needs to be translated and I know it really really really needs to be done right because a) it's Parliament and b) this issue gets media attention. But I want to blog about it, dammit!)

The transcript will be up here when it's ready. The CBC's liveblog is also useful.

Here are the key things I learned from the evidence given at this committee:

1. The government, being the government, can change the legal penalties for failing to fill out the census form. If they believe the penalties are too harsh, they can go right ahead and legislate milder penalties, or no penalties. Because that's what the government does - makes and modifies laws.

2. The government gets to approve the census questions. If they find any questions too intrusive, they can just...not approve those questions, and they won't go in the census.

3. The Privacy Commissioner has gotten 50 complaints over the census in 20 years.

4. No one has ever gone to jail for failing to fill out the census.

5. The question about the number of rooms is used to, among other things, identify what is called "hidden homelessness". In some remote Arctic communities, the ratio of rooms to people reveals that there isn't enough housing, even though no one is sleeping on the street or anything.

This is way more interesting than I thought it would be, and very informative. I look forward to them posting the transcript soon so I can make a proper post.

1 comment:

laura k said...

That is interesting!

The hidden homelessness issue is SO huge in US cities. It's one of the reasons urban planners and reformers fought hard for a real census.