News

With the April 19 meeting behind us, it's important to take stock of what we accomplished together.  Before we get into it, we should point out that the gathering in Brampton was productive for three reasons.  First, we got the chance to meet one another in person.  For those who knew each other

The Statistics Canada website has made standard Census products easy to find and download at any given geographic scale and file format.  Because these products are now free and open, we won't worry about bringing them into the Community Data Catalogue -- at least not for now.  For this reason, t

Update: Information from this blog post has been updated to the latest iteration of Schedule C, formally approved by the Steering Committee, and to be adopted this year.

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Contents

1. Introduction

2. Three quick notes before we start

3. TransUnion Credit Report Characteristics basics

4. Digging into the data: variables, values, and units

5. What the table actually looks like: a sample row

6. What to do now

Several people have been asking me about Beyond 20/20 training in recent weeks.  Fortunately, Beyond 20/20 provides a number of online training videos to help new users understand how it works.  This post explains Beyond 20/20, and provides links to the training videos for Beyond 20/20 Profession

The June 2012 order from our list of upcoming data products (Schedule B) is now in the Community Data Program Catalogue!  Let's take a quick look at the highlights.

The 2011 Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) Permanent Residents Rounded Data Cube

The data cube is a remarkably detailed dataset that counts immigrant landings by Census geographies as small as the Census Subdivision, for the years 2000 through 2010.  (2011 data to be released in the 2012 version.)  The cube also includes crosstabulations for just about any information you might want, including immigrant class, education, occupational skills, age (single year!), and gender, just to name a few.  The data are presented at the front end in the style of a Microsoft Excel pivot table, so it's easy for even the layperson to use.

Check it out: ImmigrantLandings_2010

[Update: Use the new 2006 Census metadata reference file to help you find the tables you're interested in from the 2006 Census.]

Finding Census data that you need from the Catalogue can be challenging for new users.  If you're confused by names like Topic Based Tabulations and Community Profiles, this post explains some of the terminology that you're likely to encounter when dealing with Census data in the Community Data Program Catalogue -- with real examples from the Catalogue. 

Friday, January 16, 2012

RE: Letter from CCSD to Statistics Canada concerning the 2016 Census Program

The Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) would like to provide feedback that reflects the needs and interests of hundreds of members working in Canadian municipalities and community-based organisations as part of our Community Data Program (CDP).  This feedback comes in light of Statistics Canada's ongoing consultation process for the 2016 Census Program. 

Broadly speaking, we wholeheartedly agree that Statistics Canada should prioritise data at small geographic areas:

A higher priority will be assigned to uses that require data for small geographic areas or small groups of interest. Needs for data by dissemination area or census tract will be higher priority than those at the census metropolitan area (CMA) level, which in turn will be higher than those at the provincial/territorial level. Likewise, needs for smaller populations of interest such as recent immigrants, will be higher priority than those for larger groups such as the employed population.

Some municipalities have already started playing with last week's Census release on Language.  Check out these briefs from Peel and Toronto for details on linguistic diversity in the Golden Horseshoe.
 
The 2011 Census tables will be uploaded to communitydata.ca when Dissemination Area data are made available.

We're getting the ball rolling on custom geographies for the 2012-2017 program cycle of the Community Data Program.  Census data for your custom geographies are included in the membership fee, so take advantage