Census long form and the City of Ottawa

Bravo to Dr. Sheikh for his principled resignation as head of Statistics Canada, Canada's national statistical agency. It is a rare day one of Canada's most senior public servants says 'no', I cannot find a way to justify this, and walks away. He did the right thing. The Census is a public responsibility—both mine as a citizen and the federal government's under the Constitution of Canada.

Data on the long form are especially important to municipalities because they reveal significant disparities. They don’t let the government hide behind rosy averages which are often quite misleading. For example, a single street with a number of millionaires on it, can distort the reality of an entire neighourhood. Another example is with the long census we are able to determine that nearly half of all children in our Bayshore community are poorly prepared to enter kindergarten, twice as many as children in the communities of Centrepointe and Ottawa South and more than half again as many as the City average.

The Census long form helps us target municipal services wisely, which is essential because municipalities receive only 8 cents on every tax dollar. This is why the City of Ottawa will be asking the federal government to re-instate the Census long form as Councillor Wilkinson and I have requested. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has already done so.

I can't tell you how Canada's collective security is increased by spending billions of dollars on state-of-the-art attack planes to defend us from whom? Osama Bin Laden?  The Russians? The Americans? But I can tell you how our collective welfare is advanced by the Census long form.