November 20, 2014 the Right Honourable Stephen Harper Prime
November 20, 2014 The Right Honourable Stephen Harper Prime Minister of Canada Langevin Building 80 Wellington St Ottawa ON K1A 0A2 Dear Sir The Board of Health for the Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit wishes to express its strong support for the Private Members Bill C-626, which calls for the appointment of a Chief Statistician and the reinstatement of the mandatory Long-Form Census. In 2010, numerous organizations throughout Canada, including our Health Unit (copy enclosed), expressed grave concerns about the cancellation of the mandatory Long-Form Census and replacing it with the voluntary household survey. The concerns that were felt at the time regarding the decreased validity and reliability of a voluntary survey, especially for smaller population areas have been proven to be legitimate. Through known biases and a steady decrease in participation rates, the voluntary National Household Survey (NHS) has not produced the quality of data required by our Health Unit. As stated in chapter one of the National Household Survey User Guide, “The objective of the NHS is to provide data for small geographic areas and small populations groups.”i However, the global non-response rate, an indicator of data quality, has indicated that there is too great a risk of non-response bias and as a result, higher risk of inaccuracy for many communities across the country. The work of Public Health is evidence–based. We utilize data routinely for population health assessment, program and service planning, program evaluation and the identification of priority populations for public health interventions. The voluntary NHS, which replaced the mandatory Long-Form Census for 2011 produced data for our Health Unit’s jurisdiction (Northumberland County, City of Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton County) that have questionable reliability and validity with limited generalizability.
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