BC Environmental and Occupational Health Research Network

The federal government recently decided to eliminate the mandatory long-form census in favour of a voluntary survey. This is an unfortunate news for occupational and environmental health researchers and those working in occupational and environmental health surveillance as it will prevent access to quality data about the state of the Canadian population for a wide range of relevant indicators. Arguably, a voluntary long form would result in a non-representative sample of the Canadian population and therefore would be of limited value for generalisable research. A reduction in information about the Canadian population, in turn, restricts knowledge available for all kinds of resource allocation and policy decisions, including those related to occupational and environmental health.

Those wishing more information about this issue can refer to recent media articles:
• Globe & Mail
• CBC
• Toronto Star

If you wish to voice your opinion about this decision, you can take part in a web petition, which has been started to protest this move to make the long census form voluntary. It can be found here .
Also, the Digital Economy Consultation federal website has a voting poll to save the Census (note registration is required). Click here for more details.