Have a Long–form Census of Canada in Order to Create Data to Work From

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Submitted by prowsej 2010–07–13 00:13:33 EDT

Theme: Building Digital Skills
Idea Status: +2 | Total Votes: 4 | Comments: 0

Let's have a mandatory census in Canada so that we have the data from which to design good policies. Specifically, Canada should have a long form census that is sent out to a subset of the population (say, 20%) which must be completed by law so that we have demographic information sufficient to know who is using digital technologies and things like the occupational breakdowns of Canadians in communities across the country. Currently, Canada does not do such a census, although many other countries do. I suggest that this hurts our ability to have the evidentiary basis from which to market technologies and design digital economy policies.

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