Time to Face the Fact that the National Household Survey Is Just the Compulsory Long-Form Census Made Voluntary

A highly-charged debate that has raged now for four years on the replacement of the long-form census with the voluntary National Household Survey (NHS) has become more political and symbolic than substantive at this point. This article makes the case that the NHS has produced useable high quality data, which is comparable in coverage to that produced by the long-form, at the national, provincial, territorial and census metropolitan level. It also contends that going back to a mandatory questionnaire may not produce much better results given the increased awareness resulting from the controversy that the stiff penalties under the Statistics Act are rarely, if ever, imposed