Category Stephen Gordon
Tony Clement makes a statement – perhaps not the one he intended.
There have been occasions over the past couple of weeks where I've regretted the somewhat combative tone of my first census post. One of those times was this morning, reading Bill Robson's mild rebuke of the decision to make the long form voluntary. He suggests that critics might do better to try to engage the […]
A letter from the Canadian Economics Association to Industry Minister Tony Clement
This is the text of a letter sent to Industry Minister Tony Clement on behalf of the Executive Council of the Canadian Economics Association. The CEA Executive is asking members who wish to register their disapproval of the decision to make the 2011 census long form voluntary are asked to sign the electronic petition at […]
The Labour Force Survey is “coercive”. Are its days numbered as well?
Today's employment release will no doubt generate many headlines and not a certain amount of bragging by the government. I think almost everyone would agree that these are important data to collect and to publish. But where do they come from? The answer is the Labour Force Survey, and here is how it works: Some […]
The Canadian recovery is nearly complete. Now what?
According to this morning's Labour Force Survey release (the LFS is a mandatory survey that uses census data – are its days numbered, too?), 97% of the jobs that were lost to the recessions have been recovered. This, along with 78% of GDP (April data) and 64% of hours worked (3-month average) regained makes for […]
2011*
One of (many!) unpleasant implications of making the census long form voluntary is its effects on how data are tracked through time. Between censuses, Statistics Canada does the best it can to keep track of changes using survey data, but there's always the risk of sampling error accumulating as time goes on. The census – […]
The eurozone pain is mainly in Spain
In a previous post, I charted the employment losses for the G7 countries and noted that while the US was still bouncing along the trough of of a deep recession, the other countries were less badly-hit. But there was an important country missing from that graph – and it wouldn't have been included in a […]
Why making the 2011 census long form voluntary is a bad idea
Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks that the idea of sending out a voluntary long form in next year's census is a bad idea. Since this seems to be a file to which I will be returning from time to time, here are a couple of points to consider:
An incredibly stupid decision on the 2011 census
There is no exaggerating the boneheadedness of this decision:
One of these G7 labour markets is not like the others
The G7 are meeting in Huntsville this weekend, about an hour's drive up Highway 11 from my home town. There's been a certain amount of pre-summit jockeying about what would be on the agenda, but it's hard to see how there's going to be a consensus on the issue of the fiscal 'exit strategy' back […]
On the lessons to be learned from the elimination of the Canadian federal deficit in the 1990s
It would appear that there is a significant constituency in both the US and in Europe agitating for immediate efforts to reduce their respective governments' deficits, and some are pointing to the Canadian experience of the 1990s. If Canada could make the swift transition from decades of large and chronic deficits to being the poster […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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