Canada’s Census and the Immigration Statistics Shell Game

Canada’s policy people are falling over themselves in analyzing the impact of immigration on the 2016 census numbers. This is a good thing.

The same policy people blindly accept the census’ immigration numbers. This is a bad thing.

Good public policy should oblige the big thinkers to ask some statistic related questions:

• Do the numbers include the 2-3 % of residents who are undocumented?
• Regionally, do the numbers for the GTA reflect the 10 % of the residents who are undocumented.
• How about the undocumented residents in BC’s lower mainland?
• How about all the immigrants accepted by various provinces who wound up in Ontario?
• Do the numbers include the over 3%-4% non-residents who hold Canadian documents?

Which gets us to the basic questions…

1. Why does Ottawa, unlike Britain and other less statistically opaque jurisdictions, refuse to keep an honest set of “net immigration” books?

2. Does Ottawa realize the practical, intellectual and policy farce of refusing to acknowledge the existence of undocumented workers and their families?

3. What policy goal is achieved by cooking statistics?

In the spirit of assisting policy folks, may I suggest that cooking the statistics serves only those committed to maintaining broken immigration policies.

All of which leads to the key question:

What motivates those officials who wake up in the morning, drive to work, have a cup of coffee  and then feel obliged to maintain broken immigration policies?    

Richard Boraks, February 9 2017