When consultant Linda Pickard advises small businesses on their five-year strategies, the first place she turns is Statistic Canada’s reservoir of data from the long-form census.
Ms. Pickard combs through StatsCan’s databases in search of population trends, local economic indicators, ethnic make-up and education levels – important pieces of market information in planning a company’s expansion.
For Ms. Pickard’s clients, and for hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs across Canada, the census is both a direct and indirect source of reliable information, and helps to form a road map for where they want to go. Now, the small and medium-sized businesses who lack the marketing muscle to conduct their own private surveys stand to be among those most affected by the plan to drop the mandatory long-form census.
Alternatives to the census are more costly, more time-consuming and will result in poorer information, says Ms. Pickard, whose firm, Pickard & Laws, is based in Mississauga, Ont. “The picture of life in Canada will be fragmented,” she said. With a voluntary survey, her company “won’t be able to provide the same level of service and quality of information as we’ve been able to do over many years.”
The proposed changes have been widely criticized by economists, educators, city planners and religious groups. In hearings in Ottawa Tuesday, two former chief statisticians for Statistics Canada testified that the quality of data will suffer if the census becomes voluntary. Industry Minister Tony Clement said that the government believes some questions on the mandatory long form invade Canadians’ privacy and should not be conducted with the threat of jail terms.
The Conference Board of Canada, the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce are concerned about the change, and so is Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management and one of the country’s most respected experts on competitiveness and productivity.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which represents 107,000 small business owners, has expressed “grave” concern to Mr. Clement and asked him to hold consultations on the matter.
