Stats Canada (Veterans)

by Viper Fri 21 Dec 2018, 5:46 pm

Stats Canada planning to ask gender questions in 'pilot' census - and answering is mandatory

CBC December 21, 2018

Next year, Statistics Canada is going to be asking 250,000 Canadian households some personal questions it has never asked before — and answering them honestly is mandatory.

The agency is conducting what it calls a "pilot" census next May and June to road-test questionnaires and procedures for the next full-scale census, set for 2021.

After more than a year of consultations with data users, Statistics Canada has decided to add detailed personal questions – and needs to be sure they are properly answered to ensure the test is valid.

Stats Canada (Veterans) E0eba1ee9a553094f6b55cf3b17c2a88

That's why Canada's chief statistician, Anil Arora, has invoked a little-used power in the Statistics Act to declare that the pilot census next year is a "mandatory request for information."

Anyone who refuses to complete a mandatory census questionnaire, or "knowingly gives false or misleading information or practises any other deception," can be fined up to $500. (In late 2017, Parliament eliminated the former penalty: up to three months in jail.)

Arora justified his decision to make the pilot census mandatory in a September notice he sent to Industry Minister Navdeep Bains. "Voluntary tests in 2019," he told the minister, "could yield inaccurate or inconclusive findings for many of the proposed changes to questionnaire content."

CBC News obtained the notice under the Access to Information Act.

Statistics Canada canvassed academics and other users of census data from September 2017 to February 2018 on the new questions to be added in 2021. A report on the findings is to be published in the fall of next year.

Agency spokesperson Peter Frayne declined to provide the new questions to CBC News, calling them a "work-in-progress."

But Arora's notice to Bains indicates they deal with sex and gender, among other topics.

"Many of the content changes proposed for 2021 affect smaller population groups (transgender, non-binary, same-sex couples; language rights-holders; ethnic groups; residents with work or student visas; Indigenous populations, etc.)," he wrote.

Veterans, religion

Frayne said the new questions will also deal with Veterans, general health status, religion, skills related to digital technology, and small changes will be made to questions asked in previous census years.

Under the Statistics Act, the federal cabinet must approve the final set of questions for the 2021 census but the questions for the 2019 pilot need only be approved by the agency itself.

Statistics Canada has conducted similar pre-census tests before, but a much wider range of personal questions is slated for 2019.

The agency recently stoked controversy when news emerged that it planned to collect banking and credit information from banks on some 500,000 Canadians — part of another pilot project slated for 2019.

Arora later suspended the project while Canada's privacy commissioner investigated, a process that office says will take months. The stalled financial data pilot was not a direct survey of Canadians, unlike a census.

A spokesperson for Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said the office has been alerted to the 2019 census pilot.

"We have had some very preliminary discussions with Statistics Canada about the 2019 census test and they have undertaken to get back to us with more information," Corey Larocque said in an email.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/stats-canada-planning-ask-gender-090000269.html

by **Trooper** Fri 21 Dec 2018, 6:54 pm

Don't know what these yard birds are going to ask Veterans? I thought they know everything there is to know about Veterans. They should send the questions about Veterans to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, he will pass that on the bureaucrats who have all the answers. Honest answers, that I wouldn't count on.

So now they are threatening us with fines if they think were not answering correctly?

Sounds corrupt to me.

by vet1 Fri 21 Dec 2018, 9:00 pm

I think one will have to declare oneself as 'it', because he/she and male/female is offensive to some now.

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