Clarence Woudsma, the Director of the School of Planning, is encouraging staff and students to take action on a political issue: “In a nutshell: without consultation, the Government (via the Industry Minister who has control over Statistics Canada) has decided to scrap the Long Form (the source of our most detailed census data) from the 2011 census and replace it with a voluntary form. This will be a disaster for social scientists, policy researchers, and planning practitioners who rely on the rich socio economic data source that comes from the long form. One of the key aspects will be the loss of temporal integrity as we try and compare and contrast from previous census years to the 2011 census.”
A couple of news stories on it may help fill in the blanks.
Take action
It is critical that you take a few minutes to add your voice to the call to have this unilateral decision overturned – either via a message to your MP or other vehicles such as this online petition –
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-the-canadian-census-long-form.html
The AGP has taken action by signing the petition and sending a letter to Peter Braid and Tony Clement.
Association of Graduate Planners (AGP): University of Waterloo 