Ottawa

Off message

A year and a half after the chief statistician resigned, Statistics Canada’s chief economic analyst resigns.

Mr. Cross has plenty of praise for Statscan – it is managing pending budget cuts “efficiently yet humanely” and error rates have gone down in recent years. But “a lot of good can be offset if you get one big thing wrong – and the big thing in this instance is census and NHS [national household survey],” he said.

Survey response rates are his chief concern – the 69.3-per-cent response rate from the household survey is based on distribution to a third of households, meaning it’s actually based on answers from a fifth of the population. And it’s still unclear, he said, which segments of the population are missing from the sample. “The focus on response rates ignores questions about the quality and distribution of the responses, but discussion of the latter issues is limited by management’s insistence on being ‘on-message’ all the time about [2011] census and NHS being a success.”

Former chief statistician Ivan Fellegi describes Mr. Cross as a “top-notch economic analyst.” The Globe also has a transcript of its interview with the current chief statistician, Wayne Smith.

Looking for more?

Get the Best of Maclean's sent straight to your inbox. Sign up for news, commentary and analysis.
  • By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.