The Vancouver Sun reports on the 2011 Canadian Census result, tabulated by Statistics Canada, more popularly, if there such a thing as popularity within a bunch of statisticians, known as StatCan. Though Canada is not typically known for controversy the 2011 Canadian Census caused quite a stir. But here’s the nitty-gritty:
Statistics Canada has now released the first installment of the data from the 2011 Census that took place in May of last year. These data relate to population and dwelling counts. Further installments of data related to age and sex of the population, families, households and marital status will be made available through the year.
From 1971 to 2006, the census included two parts: the short form and the long form. The short form included questions of a tombstone nature with the main objective being a head count. The long form included the remaining questions that were focused on getting respondents’ socio-economic information in areas such as the labour market, income, transportation, education, disabilities, housing, citizenship and ethnicity.
For the 2011 Census, the federal government decided to eliminate the long-form census that had 53 questions while maintaining the short form with eight questions. Two questions on language that were previously in the long form were added to the short form. Still being a census, the short-form questionnaire remained mandatory. The quality of the short-form data being released starting Wednesday, therefore, should be broadly as good as that released from the previous censuses.
Wednesday’s release showed that, on average, the Canadian population over the past five years grew 5.9 per cent to reach 33,476,688. Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Yukon and Nunavut posted above-average, and all other provinces and territories below-average, growth. The sources of population growth over the past decade have been two-thirds through immigration and one-third through natural increases.