Canada’s bishops say keep mandatory long-form census

By Deborah Gyapong

Canadian Catholic News

OTTAWA (CCN) — Canada’s Catholic bishops have joined the chorus urging the federal government to reconsider its plan to abolish the mandatory long-form census.

“A great deal of this information, based on data gathered by Statistics Canada, is most helpful to all faith groups,” said Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) president Saint-Jerome Bishop Pierre Morissette in a letter to Industry Minister Tony Clement.

Morissette challenged the government’s assertion the mandatory long form is intrusive, noting the surveys are anonymous. He wrote that, “in order to build a more harmonious society, it is in our government’s best interest to inquire into these areas.”

“It seems reasonable to ask these questions so as to better meet the needs of Canadians,” the CCCB president wrote. “No aspect of Canadians’ lifestyles should be neglected in the effort to strengthen our nation’s identity.”

The Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) also favours keeping at least portions of the long-form census mandatory, especially questions about religious affiliation that will now be dropped in the 2011 census. The mandatory long form will be replaced by a voluntary National Household Survey (NHS) that statisticians have argued will not provide a true random sample.

“Information about religious affiliation and religious practice are helpful to many Canadians in their understanding of society and, more specifically for some faith groups, in planning for the needs of their community,” said CCRL executive director Joanne McGarry. “Such information is also extremely useful for historians and sociologists, both now and in the future, as well as to Canadians researching their own family histories.”

McGarry said she hopes a compromise can be reached for a shorter mandatory questionnaire.

The CCCB president pointed out how the bishops rely on the census data to “gain knowledge of the demographics and identify the geographic areas where our services are required.”

“From an ecumenical and inter-faith perspective, for all religions, this information is vital,” Morissette wrote.

McGarry said the census provides a “way we have of knowing where we’re at” so that if someone claims religion is declining in Canada, there’s a place to check the facts. “We need to ask these questions.”

Even independent pollsters, who use voluntary samples rely on Statistics Canada’s data. Voluntary samples create a “response bias,” said Angus Reid public affairs vice-president Jaideep Mukerji, who noted that 18-20-year-old men would be unlikely to fill out a voluntary form. Their lack of representation would skew the random sample.

While pollsters rely on random sampling, their samples are usually quite small — roughly around 1,000 people. Statistics Canada data surveys 20 per cent of the population, giving a much larger sample size with a smaller margin of error, particularly when zeroing in on regions of the country, Mukerji said. A Canada-wide sample of 1,000 looking at women in Quebec may only include about 125 Quebeckers, making for a large margin of error, he said.

The Census data provides an anchor for the private polling data, giving them something to check the reliability of their samples against, he said.
But not all Catholics are onside with the bishops’ support for a mandatory census.

“The statement of the bishops seems to have an undercurrent of statism,” said James Doak, a lay Catholic who has played a leadership role in Ottawa’s vibrant Theology on Tap movement.

“The family, my family, is a sacred institution,” said Doak. “The Government Department of Statistics and Social Re-engineering is not a holy institution.”

“One wonders what the government will do with information about who disciplines children,” he said. “Will they push for fathers to do more or less discipline in an expensive social re-engineering program?” He noted the census also asks who does what share of housework. How he and his wife determine discipline or housework sharing is a private matter within the family, he said.