The Politics of the Census: Lessons from Abroad
I late June, Minister of Industry Tony Clement announced the government’s decision to eliminate the mandatory long form of the 2011 Census and replace it with a voluntary survey to be sent to one-third of Canadian households. The decision was reportedly made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper last December and has largely been framed by Conservative cabinet ministers as an important change to safeguard the privacy of Canadians. They maintain that the state has no business in the bedrooms of society, or, more specifically, that the state has no business asking Canadians how many bedrooms they have in their places of residence. The Prime Minister ’s Office has stated, “The government made this decision because we do not believe Canadians should be forced, under threat of fines, jail, or both, to disclose extensive private and personal information” (Valpy 2010). Clement, the minister responsible for Statistics Canada, argued before a parliamentary committee on 27 July that though the information gathered in the long form is “valuable,” a “balance must be drawn” between collecting data and the privacy rights of Canadians.
The Demography of Canadian Jewry, the “Census” of 2011: Challenges and Results
This chapter has three purposes. The first purpose is to examine the Canadian census instrument in general, and uses of census data for a range of objectives relating to Jews. In particular, this involves a critical analysis of the questions on religion and ethnic origin. The second purpose is to focus on the specific change of method in the 2011 census and local concerns of the leadership of the Canadian Jewish community. In 2011, the questions on religion and ethnic origin were no longer mandatory and were instead posed on a voluntary National Household Survey (NHS). The third purpose is to introduce a “Revised Jewish Definition” as a broader construct for estimating the Canadian Jewish population and to present counts for 2011. This chapter thus updates and explicates the recent treatment of estimates of Canadian Jewish population using the National Household Survey by DellaPergola (2014, pp. 316–318).
Linking censuses through time: problems and solutions
This paper reviews the difficulties encountered when attempting to study social change by comparing data from successive censuses, and describes a system designed to provide integrated online access to data from the 1971, 1981 and 1991 Censuses in Great Britain at http://census.ac.uk/cdu/lct/.