Skip to main content

This page provides the suppression rules for data tables from the 2016 Census.

AREA SUPPRESSION

  1. No census data are released for all standard or aggregations of standard areas below a population size of 40. No census data are released for six-character (FSA-LDU) postal codes, geo-coded areas and aggregations of the block, block-face or LDU levels for populations below 100.
  2. The population under consideration for all short form data tabulations is the total population including institutional residents. For the long form data tabulations, it is the lower of the short form population in private households and the long form population estimate. For all other tabulations except Place of Work data, the population under consideration is the non-institutional population. For Place of Work data, the population under consideration is the employed labour force having a usual place of work or working at home.
  3. Income characteristic data are suppressed for areas where the population, for all standard, custom and geo-coded geographic areas, is less than 250, or where the number of private households is less than 40 (except for Place of Work tabulations).
  4. For census tabulations that include Place of Work data, the 40, 100 and 250 are applied to the Employed Labour Force counts for these areas, rather than the population of the areas. Tabulations containing both places of residence and places of work as geographic areas have the 40, 100 and 250 size limits applied to both place of residence (population) and place of work (employed labour force).


CELL SUPPRESSION

  1. It is possible (mainly for cells with small counts) that quantitative values were imputed from a single donor record. For example, an income cell with three individual records may in fact be only one actual response to income and the other two income amounts were imputed from the first record. When this occurs, the income characteristics of a single individual could be disclosed if the mean and standard error statistics are produced. To prevent this, and more generally to prevent disseminating statistics based on a narrow range of values, all statistics of a cell are suppressed if the minimum and maximum of the income amounts in the cell are equal.
  2. For all quantitative variables, all statistics are suppressed if the number of actual records used in the calculation (not rounded or weighted) is less than 4 or if the sum of the weights is less than 10.
  3. For qualitative variables a cell estimate will be suppressed if the number of records with the attribute or combination of attributes represented by the cell (unrounded and unweighted) is less than 4. In these cases, the cell will show the number 0 instead of the suppressed value, and thus will be indistinguishable from a genuinely empty cell.
  4. For semi-custom and Target Group Profiles, all income data will be suppressed for geographic areas with a non-institutional population of less than 250, or the number of private households is less than 40.
  5. Suppression of data also occurs when certain questions are not asked of all respondents. Persons living on Indian reserves and Indian settlements who were enumerated with the 2011 NHS N2 questionnaire were not asked the questions on citizenship (Question 10), landed immigrant status (Question 11) and year of immigration (Question 12).

RANDOM ROUNDING

  1. For short form Census data, all counts are rounded to a base of 5. This means that all 2A counts will end in either 0 or 5.
  2. Long form Census data and 2011 National Household Survey (NHS) data requires a slightly different random rounding algorithm. All counts greater than 10 are rounded to base 5, as is done for 2A data. Counts less than 10 are rounded to base 10. This means that any 2B Census or 2011 NHS counts less than 10 will always be changed to 0 or 10.

These thresholds are applied to data retrievals from all Census years and NHS. For further information, refer to: Guide to the Census of Population 2016