Angela Hill
Health professionals are lending their voices to a campaign to preserve the mandatory, long-form census.
"There is obviously widespread concern," said John Campey, executive director of Social Planning Toronto, a research and public information organization.
Social Planning Toronto was one of the groups behind the Save the Census Campaign, which held coast-to-coast media events Thursday for health care workers to express their concerns.
"Since the announcement was made that they were scrapping the (long-form) census, there has been this growing groundswell, as group after group has realized this has a major impact," he said. The Medical Health Officers Council of Saskatchewan has written a letter to the Ministry of Industry in Ottawa to explain its concerns about a short form and voluntary census.
"It's very worrisome," said Dr. Khami Chokani, medical health officer for the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region.
"The data will be skewed because we will lose information from very, very, significant proportion of our population - people living in poverty and (those) less likely to fill out a voluntary form. Our aboriginal communities could be missed out totally."
Data from the census is used in conjunction with health statistics to paint a more complete picture of health status in the region and helps officials to allocate resources.
"It's really important information, if you are looking at socioeconomic factors . . . level of education and level of income are strong indicators of health," said Melanie Dubyk, an epidemiologist with the health region.
"If we didn't have this appropriate census data we wouldn't be able to look at those relationships, we wouldn't be able to look at our health region and say, 'these are probably our at-risk areas.'"
Without census data it would be harder to decide how to organize and prioritize services, said Dubyk.
"It going to be a big piece of the puzzle that would be missing ... and for us that would be frustrating."
In July the Government of Canada announced that it would make changes to replace the 2011 mandatory long-form census with the voluntary National Household Survey.
"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," said the Minister of Industry Tony Clement, in a public statement.
According to an emailed statement from Statistics Canada, having the short-form census staying mandatory they expect response rates similar to the 2006 census. As for the voluntary survey, "Statistics Canada will apply the same rigorous standards and methods it applies to all of its voluntary surveys."
