He refused to budge despite opposition in the civil service and his cabinet, and loud protests across the country by 350 academic, business and other groups as well as high-profile individuals, such as Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada, and David Dodge, his predecessor. Harper’s diktat led to the resignation of Munir Sheikh, head of Statistics Canada, the agency that conducts the census.
It is a mark of how secretive the prime minister is that two years after the fact we still do not know why he killed the mandatory long form census that used to be sent to a fifth of Canadian households.
Was it merely his libertarian instincts that government ought not to intrude in people’s lives (even though it does in a million ways, from collecting our taxation information to personal background for security purposes)?
Or was it, as critics alleged, part of his systematic assault on scientific and statistical data, so that he could make decisions on ideology and personal whim rather than evidence?
The voluntary survey drew a response rate of only 68 per cent, not the 95 per cent and more that the mandatory form routinely elicited. Those who did not respond were most likely those about whom Ottawa most needs the information — aboriginals, low-income people, etc. — to fashion informed public policy. Perhaps Harper is happy not to know much about them.
The latest data, released Wednesday, is good enough to capture national trends but it becomes less reliable as you drill it down. That’s why StatsCan has refused to release data from as many as 1,100 smaller communities — ironically, the bedrock of Conservative support in many parts of the country.
More egregiously, the new information cannot be compared to previous census data. That’s why the agency is warning against comparing apples and oranges. This is nothing short of tragic. A treasure trove of past knowledge can no longer be put to continuous comparative use.
Here are some broad trends worth knowing.
A fifth of us, 20.6 per cent, are foreign-born — the highest among G8 nations. In the U.S., the figure is 12.9 per cent and in Britain, 11.5 per cent. Only Australia surpasses us, at 26.8 per cent.
More than half our immigrants still come from Asia — the Philippines, China and India, in that order. There is also a noticeable increase in immigrants from Africa.
We have immigrants from 200 countries and of 200 ethnicities (33 of whom have a population of more than 1 million).
Immigrants congregate in urban centres, with 91 per cent living in 33 cities.
Whereas more immigrants are going to the prairies, Ontario continues to attract the biggest chunk — 43 per cent.
Visible minorities (“non-aboriginal and non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour”) are also about a fifth of the population (19.1 per cent). But nearly a third of them are Canadian-born. Vismins now constitute a majority in as many as nine cities, including Toronto, Markham, Brampton, Mississauga and Richmond Hill.
As in the previous census, the largest visible minority group is South Asians, at 1.567 million (two-thirds from India or of Indian origin). The Chinese are estimated at 1.32 million and blacks at 945,000.
The median age of new immigrants is 31.7 and that of visible minorities 33, compared to 40 for the population as a whole.
Whereas their proportion of the population is falling, Christians still constitute the largest religious group — 67.3 per cent, of whom 12.7 million are Catholics.
Christians are also still the most dominant group among new immigrants — nearly half.
A third of new immigrants between 2001 and 2011 were Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists.
Islam remains the fastest growing faith. The Muslim population nearly doubled to 1.05 million, just as it had doubled between 1991 and 2001. About 55 per cent of Canadian Muslims live in Ontario.
Of the Hindu population of 498,000, nearly three-quarters lives in Ontario.
The Sikh population is pegged at 455,000 and that of Buddhists at 366,000.
Muslims are the youngest among religious groups, with the median age of 28.9 — compared to Sikhs, 32.8; Hindus, 34.2; Catholic, 42.9; Anglican, 51.1; and United Church, 52.3.
Between 2006 and 2011, Canada received 1.16 million immigrants, debunking the myth long peddled by right-wing pundits that immigration was a Liberal plot.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Haroon Siddiqui
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