HANSARD
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Ms. Diana Whalen (Chairman)
Hon. Judy Streatch
Mr. Keith Bain
Mr. Chuck Porter
Mr. Howard Epstein
Ms. Vicki Conrad
Mr. Leonard Preyra
Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay)
Mr. Harold Theriault
IN ATTENDANCE:
Mrs. Darlene Henry
Legislative Committee Clerk
WITNESSES
Department of Finance
Ms. Nancy McInnis-Leek
Executive Director, Fiscal and Economic Policy
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STANDING COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
9:00 A.M.
Chairman
Ms. Diana Whalen
Vice -Chairman
Mr. Chuck Porter
MR. CHUCK PORTER (Chairman): Good morning everyone. I think we'll get started. We have a quorum with six here, myself included. We welcome this morning, from the Department of Finance, Ms. Nancy McInnis-Leek. We look forward to your presentation. Maybe just before we start, we'll go around the room with a quick introduction.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: So we'll start right off with your presentation, if you like, Ms. McInnis-Leek.
MS. NANCY MCINNIS-LEEK: First I would like to mention that each of you have a package in front of you that I've prepared that includes the presentation that I'm doing this morning. It also includes background information on Community Counts, and some interesting statistics information from that source that you may find valuable in your current roles, as well as in a broader sense of general interest.
This morning what I'm going to do is present a fairly straightforward overview of what Community Counts is, what its program objectives are, who the target audience is, what does the information in Community Counts look like, what types of information it contains, and some brief points on where we plan to go in the future, and what opportunities we see that Community Counts has.
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Community Counts, for your information, is a program dedicated to providing Web-based access to Nova Scotia's social and demographic statistics. To find it, you simply log in through the government Web site to the Department of Finance and, on the left-hand side column, under Different Features you will see Nova Scotia Community Counts listed. To access it, you simply click on that button and it takes you into the Community Counts Web site.
What Community Counts does that is different from typical statistical information that the Department of Finance houses is it provides stats in combination with a geographic information system. Many things today have moved from being static information in tabular form and on pieces of paper, or even in computerized tables, to being linked to geography. That's a very important context when you want to understand Nova Scotia or understand a given area and be able to access information on the basis of geography, not just on the source information itself.
So actually providing statistical information, which sounds really dry, on a geographic basis is very helpful in terms of providing a useful way for a user to gain the information or knowledge they wish to have. It's a very powerful information tool. It's also one that on a national level and international level is becoming commonplace. People expect to be able to find information geographically linked. So it's our first step, as a Department of Finance, in that direction.
The program called Community Counts has very recently been absorbed from being a project into being a program within the economic statistics division within the Department of Finance. The area I look after is called the Fiscal and Economic Policy Branch and it has two divisions. One of those, the economic statistics division, is responsible for housing all of the economic and statistical information that the government is responsible for. It also means that we are the statistical agency, in terms of Statistics Canada, which houses a wide range of information on Canada and Nova Scotia and all the other provinces with regard to social, demographic, economic information.
In terms of this particular program, the objective is one which is very important from the perspective of the Department of Finance and very important from the perspective of the branch I represent. One of the goals of the branch I represent is to provide decision support to government agencies, business, and the public with respect to a variety of things including fiscal planning, taxation, economics and general statistics.
What Community Counts is intended to be is a decision support tool, a way to access that information, to assist those involved - particularly within the provincial government - in program and service delivery to define those programs and to assess those programs, as well as providing an opportunity to identify economic opportunities overall for development. Those are very important on a community level these days. We are trying to promote community economic stability and economic self- sufficiency, but that can't be done without
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the information - and we often get requests from that level of geography for information related to those particular communities. So this is the first step forward that actually provides that easily to communities.
It also provides an opportunity to consolidate key statistical data which can be reported at community level - in "community" here, we are not just talking about the community of East Jeddore or that level of community, but community is divided up into a variety of organized areas which in this sort of technology they call geographies. So it allows people to access that information in a variety of consolidated pieces of data and analyze and compare on that basis.
A very important component, sort of a base-building block component, of any statistical information or geographic-based system is to ensure that the information that you are trying to acquire and report is developed in such a way that it can be put into a geographic information system or can be compared to other data sets; therefore, one of the key objectives of this particular program is to develop, establish and maintain key protocols and standards for such data. That will make it a great deal easier to maintain the system, because the system doesn't have to own the data - it can be located in various other places within Nova Scotia and still reported through the Web-based application.
These days you don't have to have information all contained on one computer in order to be able to report it. With the links ability that the Internet provides, you can have information stored in a wide range of locations and in different formats, and through standards and protocols bring it in and put it back out through, or allow it to be accessed by one point, one system, one user interface. So that's what we hope to achieve, but it depends on establishing these standards and applying them particularly to some of the provincial data that is being reported through this.
The key to any information access system, and access to information in general, is that it be user-friendly; therefore one of the challenges we have with Community Counts, as with any statistical source of information, is to create an ease of access and ease of use for the various purposes that people would like to apply the information. Everyone has a different need, a different requirement, a different interest, and we want to ensure that the way we develop this allows people to access the information and use it in a way that serves that interest or need. The part that makes that possible is what we call the user interface - the part that you first encounter when you log onto Community Counts, the ease with which you can understand how to move through it to find your information relatively quickly, without having to take a great deal of time to net yourself down through the system.
Right now there is something like 450 different screens within Community Counts. There are tens of thousands of data points, actual groupings of data. It is a challenge to make it possible for people to actually go into the system and quickly find what they want. If you use it yourself and start with a simple query, after a while you'll find curiosity will lead you
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to want to know more and to look for more and to compare more, and after a while you'll be sitting at the computer for 10 or 12 hours and still enjoying yourself.
This user interface has to allow you to do that quickly so it doesn't take you a long time, as an individual, or as a business, or as a government agency, to be able to do that. Those are the program objectives.
In terms of our target audience, our first and primary target is focused on the provincial government, its agencies, its boards, those connected to the government directly. The reason for that, and the interest of the Department of Finance, is there is a need today and into the future to customize our programs and services, to evaluate them against information that is not just at a provincial level. A "one shoe fits all" is not going to be a suitable approach for the future - populations are changing, community needs are changing. We need to provide, as Department of Finance, the information in a way that allows people in those departments to quickly assess where they need to go in terms of program delivery.
[9:15 a.m.]
Whether it be where to put a school or hospital, or where to develop roads, or where broadband is needed, or where to put an economic development opportunity such as a business in connection with the location of those other resources, those are decisions today that have to be done fairly instantaneously - we don't have the time or the latitude to study this infinitely before decisions have to be made.
In targeting it towards such government agencies, we hope to enable them to, in one particular case, address the change in demographics we're seeing that are going to have drastic impacts on our services, our costs and delivery. So when it comes to costs and it comes to dollars, of course the Department of Finance is very interested in ensuring that programs can be done as efficiently as possible.
As I mentioned earlier, there are community interests in Nova Scotia which have been growing. We, as a government, through the Department of Economic Development and its office of Economic Development, today have tried to encourage the growth of community decision-making, such as develop your own economic opportunities, assess your strengths and weaknesses. It is very difficult for communities to do that when they are in locations which are far from data sources, far from ease of information access.
In my previous role, where I was with the Department of Natural Resources, we frequently got requests for customized information for these communities to help them assess their resource bases. Through such things as Community Counts, we can provide at least one segment of the information which makes it easy to attain for a community without having to leave their community. We can also customize that information for the community, both
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in geographic boundary as well as the type of information they need to know about their community to make future decisions.
In terms of economic development, it is very typical for someone developing a business, developing a manufacturing plant, looking at any business opportunity, that they want to know something about the communities in Nova Scotia - where they might want to locate, they want to know the labour force, they want to know the age groups, property values, there is a variety of information that is important to making the decision about where to locate - Community Counts can provide access to a lot of that information rapidly which, again, supports better decision making. Better decision making on the part of an industry or a business will ensure its longevity has a greater probability than if it makes the wrong choices.
The general public often requires, or needs, or wants, or has an interest in specific information about Nova Scotia, generally its population, perhaps the size of its communities, location of communities, connection between communities. There is a whole host of information that we get requests for as a statistical agency.
Community Counts provides a very rapid and ease of access way for someone to look at those questions, whether it be a school project or for a special interest group developing a profile of community, but it provides that information very easily and in a way that they can print out or display for their own purposes and meet that need, rather than having staff compile those types of things on an individual basis. So it's an efficiency measure on our part that it is accessible through Community Counts.
The last target audience is one you may not suspect, but international interests. These days when we look at economic opportunities, when we look at any features of the economy, the competition and the comparability is done, not just locally, it's not even done nationally anymore, it is done internationally.
When someone is looking at buying a business in Nova Scotia from somewhere in Europe, they want to find out about the economy, they want to find out about the local communities. Community Counts can provide a quick access to that, it can provide comprehensive data that allows them to assess the viability of a decision they are about to make. Therefore it is a very important tool and a very powerful tool in the sense that through this information we can influence, in a positive way, the interests of foreign interests in supporting our economy, whether it be through buyout of companies, developing companies, markets - all of those things are very important in terms of choosing where companies are going to play these days.
Into Community Counts itself, what does it look like? As I mentioned, there are a variety of different geographies, different community levels that can be displayed. There are also topics, subjects, some of the formats are called community profiles, which are a
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comprehensive pre-organization of a variety of information types. There are statistical summaries such as population by age, printable maps - you can actually display a lot of this information in a map format. Some of those things are in your package, and I'll show you some as part of this presentation. In terms of how the information can be displayed today, we have graphs, charts, schematic wraps, and the standard statistical indicators and tables.
When you first open Community Counts, there are a number of choices you have to make. One, what type of geography would you like to look at? In other words, what is the size of the community? You can still look at the provincial level data, you can also look at information organized by the District Health Authorities, the county, community health board and community.
When you are looking at topics, the broad topics are demographics - that's everything about the population; income, which is sourced out of our taxation information; education, much of this data comes from the Department of Education, it's linked there; households, sourced through Statistics Canada and all of their resources; labour; social and health. Some of these were continuing to be developed, they aren't core within the Department of Finance so we are working with other departments to develop and connect those particular information sources to these types of topics and new topics.
One of the areas we have as a pilot project currently is working with Department of Justice to display crime statistics. They have a project which is underway and funded partially through national money to develop a system of crime indicators and associated data. The project we are working on with them will enable us to display that through Community Counts, which again makes it available to a broad sector in terms of target audiences.
Samples of the types of products you can view when you are looking at Community Counts and you chose the geography, you chose the topic and you picked a subject you'd like to look at, these are different ways to display it other than the standard numerical format, and some things are of varied interest.
We have a project that we're developing in co-operation with all of the government departments on demographics. We are facing a significant shift in our demographics which will effect, from the Finance Department's perspective, our revenue streams - but from other department's perspectives, for instance Health, it has implications and impacts on their services and their costs, education, transportation. So we have great interest these days in developing the types of information and forecasting information on demographics, age, income, all those sorts of characteristics.
If you look at the age one here, for instance, you can see the distribution by age group. One of the things in age that we're facing, of course, as the baby boomers move forward, we're making a serious social shift in the way we run our lives in Nova Scotia. The population numbers of the age groups that are younger than 40 are much smaller than the age
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groups over 40. That's the age group financially that supports us who are hoping to retire soon anyway, maybe five years, and being part of that social structure.
As we plan that we have to be able to forecast or determine and project what a population in the future will look like for Nova Scotia, and projecting population is not as simple as you might expect. It's not a straight math factor, you know, just taking into account births and deaths - we have to look at migration, both immigration and movement out of the province, and that's a considerable concern for Nova Scotia where we're losing so many of the working age group, the up and coming age group, to other provinces. But these graphically display some of the shifts that you might see that are important.
If you look at the origin one for Nova Scotia, you'll still see that in Nova Scotia a large percentage of the population was born here. If you compared that to probably 20 years ago, that blue part of the pie would have been much, much larger. In the future you have to be able to figure out, can we draw people from elsewhere, either other provinces or other countries, to come here to fill the gap that we're going to have in terms of the working age class population?
The educational level is often considered a social and health indicator - the educational level does have some direct links to longevity and health. Those are all factors, again, that figure into the Health Department's concern about how to provide services, what types of services they need overall. How people travel has an impact on the Transportation and Public Works Department's planning. In Nova Scotia, which you're all very well aware of, we use car, truck, van - basically wheels - to travel considerably more than perhaps in central Ontario where you have more alternatives.
If we are trying to reduce environmental damage due to greenhouse gases, how do we do that given the population? Can we actually cut back on some of this population's use of vehicles? Can we actually substitute different types of public transit in meeting those needs? These statistics help you to analyze these types of questions and determine what direction, for instance, our infrastructure should go and where, when you look at the display in a map form, do we need to put our highways, where can we put public transit, where can we gain efficiencies in terms of the environmental impacts. When you begin to look at things on a mapped basis - and there are some more maps in your package to look at - the differences between, and in this case we're looking at electoral districts, we could look at counties, but either way it shows the extreme diversity that we are seeing in some of the demographic characteristics.
Income is very important to all Nova Scotians; taxes are also very important to Nova Scotians. If we look at it from my own perspective of dealing with tax revenue in the future, you can't draw taxes or expect to draw taxes from lower incomes. Assume that we need to identify opportunities for generating revenue through taxes, where would we expect the impact to be? Well if we raise taxes on, say the upper brackets, upper limits, the impact is
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primarily going to be in the Halifax area - that is where the social impact of raising taxes is going to be.
If we were to eliminate some of the social support systems, you can see some of the counties with lower income are going to be the areas where that's going to be impacted. When you look at that, it's a lot different than assuming "one shoe fits all" across Nova Scotia, and when you marry this up with other information about health, job opportunities, potential income opportunities, it paints a very different picture in terms of what you might want to do with your programming, how you might want to proceed with issues such as taxation and user fees. Those display it much differently when you have to look at it from a social perspective, and actually a more realistic look at what your opportunities or constraints are.
In terms of future plans and opportunities for Community Counts, it is a new program for us in the sense that it was adopted into my group as a program on April 1st. It's been a project for a number of years.
The first thing we are doing is trying to raise awareness of Community Counts and its use. There has been considerable effort done over time with the local community development organizations throughout Nova Scotia, with some of the other government departments, with information sources. However, in terms of users within the government and the target audience of the provincial government, we still have to raise awareness. Part of that is done through providing training.
In the last two months, we've provided considerable training to policy people, program people and senior management in government departments. They need to be aware of it. We would certainly offer any training to you or any of the other elected officials in the government since, I think from your own perspectives, this provides you a very useful tool to learn or understand issues in your own constituencies.
To make it a little bit easier for use as you get further away from us, we've developed user tool kits, stand-alone training packages which allow a community development group to pick it up, train themselves on how to use it very efficiently and effectively. We continue to review and develop data sets, look at opportunities for incorporating data sets that people need, develop some more long-term contacts with users as well as sources for information, begin to implement the standards of protocols, build on what we have today and to create a continuing very powerful tool.
One of the examples that has been very effective over the last year has been developing the community development worker project with the Office of Economic Development. That has provided us with extra funding to develop some of the user tools, to test drive the needs at the community level for information, develop some very high level
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awareness and gain a better understanding on our own parts for where we could go or need to go in terms of supporting those needs.
With that, I'll conclude. If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much for that very informative presentation. We will start, maybe 10 minutes per person around the room. We'll start with Mr. Theriault.
MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you for your presentation. You've brought up something here this morning that there's a lot of concern about in this province for financing, taxes. One big one, and you mentioned it, is out-migration. There are people leaving this province in droves and we see things happening like down in Digby, Shaw Wood closing, Weymouth Mill closing, Trenton Works just closing. I think we're going to see more Trenton Works closing, in this province, to be able to compete in the world, I think, is going to be my question.
You say Community Counts and I just don't know what that means - that community counts the amount of people in it and the amount of taxes? Probably that's where you're coming from, but to me, Community Counts means it counts.
[9:30 a.m.]
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: The name itself is basically, as they say, a double entendre. It means both things in this case. It recognizes the value of communities and the need to, as I mentioned, understand communities as well as the numeric information generated about communities.
MR. THERIAULT: But, I think we need to understand more than our communities here. We need to understand what is going on in the world. For one instance, I want to just give you one instance, I went to Boston just lately to a seafood show - 550 exhibitors from all over the world. Ten years ago, at this exhibition, less than 1 per cent was the presence of China. Two weeks ago in Boston, the presence was between 10 and 15 per cent of the seafood from China, taking our raw product from here, because we can't afford to process it here, send it to China, have it processed, put it back in our grocery stores cheaper, much cheaper, than we can do it here. That's just one little instance.
Our wood places are shutting down because of the competition. Has this department looked at this? Are they studying this? Is there any idea of how we are going to compete with the world, just here in this province? I have some good ideas but I want to know if your department has any ideas of how we are going to compete with what is going on.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: In the Department of Finance and in the group I look after, one of the major areas is economics, and not from the economic development side, which
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is the Office of Economic Development, from the economic statistics and understanding side. You are very right about the change in global dynamics, as they call it. China and India are the growth centres. Even if you are dealing with call centres, many of the call centres now are located in India. They have a population growth that dominates in that sense and as China, in particular, changes into a market economy, it creates both demand for products as well as a source of supply of products. They are now manufacturing, or plan to manufacture, cars. They manufacture many goods that we have here. Also, they have the labour force to be able to, at lower cost, manufacture goods.
One of the things we noticed in Canadian economics overall is that our manufacturing sector, whether you would be talking about fish products or forest products, is not able to compete with the emerging economies, whether it be Russia, in the case of forestry, or India or China in terms of manufacturing, or Japan even when you look at technologies. We are seeing in Nova Scotia, and have seen for 25 years, a shift in our economy away from the traditional resource-based, manufacturing-based economy into what you call the service sector, because that is a more locally controllable, developable type of area.
However, when you look at the future, service sectors that are made up of your retail or your fast food do not employ people as a lifetime employment. They do not necessarily pay the salaries and allow people to maintain a living wage as a full-time job. Therefore, what one has to look at on the service side is the higher-end service, the consulting, the electronics. Those are also areas where you have to compete with everyone else trying to get into that sector. The United States is facing the same thing. Many of the countries in Europe are facing the same problem, we are chasing the same types of development where we can start up businesses more easily.
If you look at where the opportunities may be, you have to look at what strengths we have and where we can find a niche market. We are a small producer of anything, so to speak, so we can't compete on volumes. We have to watch not to enter markets which require huge volumes of production in order to maintain that market share. Those are huge challenges to look at. The Office of Economic Development and Nova Scotia Business Inc. are constantly challenged to try to find those. There are many businesses trying to find those. There is no magic answer.
Diversity is still the one thing you have to try to maintain, diversity in terms of - we have our strengths still, our resource base. How do we turn the resources that we have into a long-term market? In the case of forestry, where I used to work, just manufacturing base lumber is not enough. We can't compete. We have to move to the more specialized market such as hardwood flooring. Even when we moved to kiln-dried lumber, those were special value added items to be able to do that. We have to do that in all our sectors, even in the case of fish and agricultural products. How do we use the resource we have and turn it into something special that no one else can do?
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You have to move fast. In the case of wood product, the only reason why we were able to maintain our lumber markets for so long was because of what they considered strength. Our northern trees - you can cross long areas with a piece of timber from Nova Scotia that you can't do from some of the southern forests because of the strength factors, but that has been superceded by metal structures, by composite woods. You have to keep moving. Well, that is true of all of the others as well but you need to analyze it specifically and everyone needs to work all the time to figure out where that market is and move fast. The world is moving much faster than it ever did before. So there's no special answer but there is a variety of information we can use to try to develop that.
MR. THERIAULT: I hear exactly what you're saying and coming back to our natural resources, the next thing is our land and water. You know the demand for fresh water is going to grow and grow and grow all around the world. Our demand for basalt rock is big out there. We have no way here, there's no mechanism in place to keep this, you know, if everything goes right, I mean countries from outside can come in and take this away with a promise of a few jobs, or whatever. We need more than that. If we cannot value-add to our land and to our water, that has to go, and I'm sure that it has to go. We've got to share our water. Probably we may have to share some of our land for uses, but somehow we have to benefit from that.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Yes.
MR. THERIAULT: If not from adding value to it, we have to add royalties to it. Somehow that has got to be under the Minerals Act, or whatever, because we're going to lose out big time if we don't.
Another thing I want to touch on too, do you believe - and I've heard this from a lot of people over the last few years and I want your opinion on it - Atlantic Canada would have to amalgamate to compete in the world? Is that something that has to be looked at here in Atlantic Canada?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Well, I have worked in a number of provinces in Atlantic Canada. I've also been around quite awhile and seen various reiterations of the amalgamation route and that mostly focuses on government. You don't need to amalgamate to compete but you need to co-operate to compete. There really needs to be a greater agreement to co-operate on economic benefits rather than to fight competitively on everything. We have a history, a long, long history of being competitive.
Bridging that natural tendency to compete and turning it into, both at the business level as well as at the political and service level, a co-operative venture takes a tide of people believing that that is the way we should go. We don't lose our identity, we don't have to combine governments, but we do have to learn to work together. There are areas where we do work together but there are many boundaries and many barriers to working together.
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We've been knocking those down over time, such as movement of labour, agreement to allow business to operate in one province and the other provinces the same - without having to take extra steps or more hurdles. Those barriers have to come down.
To address legislation, for instance, making legislation - the rules around business operations, rules around taxation - as similar as possible to make it easier for people to not have to choose location or not have to do duplicate work, many things like that that are not necessarily at the top of the news agenda but are very important to providing what appears to be a seamless region. Those are the types of areas of co-operation that we need to work on in every facet.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Theriault. Your time has expired and maybe we'll be able to come back to you. Mr. Preyra.
MR. LEONARD PREYRA: Thank you very much for the presentation today. I think this program, Community Counts, sounds very promising, both from a political point of view but also for scholars and for people who are interested in community development. I think what you're doing is laudable and that if more people know about it, you know, more people will use it and will be able to refine it as a tool as well. So thank you for talking to us about it.
I have a few general questions and some specific ones. My critic area is mostly immigration, post-secondary education and youth. So my questions will revolve around those but I do have a general question about the data itself. Some of the data seems to refer just to census information but in your comments on some of the links you were talking about provincial government data. How are those sources of information incorporated because this data that we've seen here seems outdated if you say, well, this is just 2001 data, but what you had up there seemed much more promising and I'm wondering how the departments are co-operating in bringing that data together.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: The core data set is our national system provided by Statistics Canada. In terms of demographics, the most comprehensive and comparable information data sets we have are through the census, which only occur once every five years - and it takes about two years after that for the data sets to be complete. Therefore, in terms of demographics, that is sort of a baseline information that we work with, and a very sound one at that.
In terms of how we can enhance that with our own understanding, many government departments through different venues have statistical information about, for instance, education. The Department of Education does have information about the number of students, the number of universities, they have information in terms of secondary schools, primary schools. That information is collected through a different way than Statistics Canada or surveys - it is collected as a function of the business of the Department of Education.
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In order to be able to access that and provide it through Community Counts, the way we would begin, and are beginning, is by discussing with the Department of Education how their information is housed, whether they would be willing to allow us to connect here, whether they would be willing to maintain that data as current as possible, and whether that information can be broken down below the provincial level.
One of the criteria we have for Community Counts is that the information has to be reportable below the level of province for us to add it to Community Counts as a community level data set. So those discussions would begin, we would assess and talk to the departments about whether they would like to participate - it depends on the resources they have to do so - many of them would like to, however they don't have people dedicated to statistics or even, these days, policy or economics. Where we can, we try to incorporate what data sets we can in here for that purpose. Over time we would try to grow that.
MR. PREYRA: So if we take education as an example, if I wanted to find out what the high school graduation rate or retention rate is in a particular school board, would I be able to find that today?
[9:45 a.m.]
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Not as yet, no, that's one area we're interested in, and many people are interested in, but we haven't reached a point with the Department of Education where that information is set up, standards, protocols, form and format, that they could provide it to us, but over time that would be an area where there is great interest.
MR. PREYRA: So it would still be hit and miss at this point?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Yes, it is.
MR. PREYRA: If I was looking for something on, let's say immigration rates at various RDAs, for example . . .
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: We do have immigration rates. We have tried to break that down to the community level. The RDA's is not a geography that's on here at the moment, but they mainly represent county levels - you can find those information sources at the county level.
MR. PREYRA: Just some general questions. The most recent, the early results of the 2006 survey are pretty chilling for Nova Scotia and it paints a picture of a population that is even more homogenous and more people leaving, especially some of the data here that you had on comparing Halifax County and Guysborough, I suspect are even more pronounced and the projections are pretty severe.
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What kinds of policy connections are there between this program and other policy- making agencies at the governmental level - for example, economic development or the RDAs, do you have any way of establishing a dialogue with them to find out exactly what's happening? Because a lot of these are just raw data - as with most data sets, it is raw. It doesn't say why people are leaving or where they're going or how long they're going for and whether they're open to coming back. Is there any way of finding that information in the future or making sense of it in a policy point of view?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Well, in the policy perspective you have to, as you clearly pointed out, connect the numbers to the cause and effect. Now in the case of the regional development authorities, they have been connected to this project because they do have a particular interest and need in the statistical aspects so they can begin explaining the whys and wherefores and determine how to stop some of the issues from occurring in the future.
In terms of linking to the policy aspect at the provincial department level, through the assistant deputy ministers' committee they have adopted the demographics concern, the demographics information, as a project in order to incorporate some of the results of these statistics into the program planning and identification of current and future issues. For instance, as you pointed out, the difference between Guysborough and Halifax is one of the reasons that there is concern. I actually lived in Guysborough County for about 10 or 12 years, I'm very familiar with it. I've also worked there from time to time and one of the unique features of Guysborough County is it has a very high seniors' population.
If you were to deal with the community leaders, as I have in the past, you would find that most of the community group leaders are over 70, and each one of them is wearing several hats. I once had to organize - as part of a provincial "stopping around in the province" type of issue - meetings of community groups to deal with the idea of community capacity building, and there were six, in Guysborough County, representing twenty-five organizations.
MR. PREYRA: Well the Guysborough data, if I'm reading this right, says that Guysborough has always had a high percentage of seniors, but the 5 to 19 and the 20 to 34 have dropped - pretty well the bottom has dropped out there.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Because although they've always had a fairly high seniors' population, they also used to have a younger population. They're basically a fishing-based community, forestry based and mineral based. They don't have manufacturing, so one of the shifts that has occurred in terms of job marketing in Guysborough County, as those resource-based industries are no longer as buoyant as they were, people even in my generation left, and now the people in my children's generation - the few that are there - are also leaving, which, by numbers, the seniors are still there and their population numbers are perhaps not growing, however their proportion is growing.
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But in terms of a provincial concern, the same as you'd have in a national concern, having all the population located in one centre, and all the eggs in one basket issue, it also creates borderline security issues when you're dealing with enforcement or compliance on those small issues - but the biggest problem is the ability to provide any service efficiently. The demand versus the supply cost may be the same, but your per-head count issues rise up and then if you apply standard sort of generic decision making where you don't provide schools where there are less than five students per teacher, these areas will drop out simply on those statistics. So you have to be very cognizant of the changes in the communities and how you are going to meet that demand in the future. When I was there, there was only the primary school, a one-room schoolhouse, and by the time you got into Grade 8 you had to travel for half an hour to school. There are very few places where they can now even have a primary school.
MR. PREYRA: Thank you. I have a couple of questions about immigration . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Preyra, we'll come back to you . . .
MR. PREYRA: Am I out already?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ten minutes goes by fairly quickly.
MR. PREYRA: Time flied when you're having fun.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Sorry, I should have made my answers shorter. I'll be glad to answer them after.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Bain.
MR. KEITH BAIN: I'm just going to be very brief, Mr. Chairman. I want to follow up when reference was made to Guysborough. Northern Victoria County is, can we say, a remote area of this province and it's recognized as being remote. We talked about resource-based industry and in northern Victory County, it's no doubt the fishery. As our population is aging, we're seeing that people are getting out of the fishery. There's been a downturn, the family doesn't want to go into that venture anymore. I guess my question would be, because the only other industry we might say in northern Victoria County is tourism, how would the community or cluster of communities go about obtaining more information, expanding what they have now?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Well, in the case of Victoria County, that's where most of my relatives are, fishermen from Wreck Cove, and I've seen the decline in the family . . .
MR. BAIN: You must be related to me too? (Laughter)
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MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Probably. You know when you're from Cape Breton, you're related to so many people more than once, it's scary.
MR. BAIN: My grandparents are from Breton Cove.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Oh really? Yes, well we probably share some very diluted genes.
Joking aside on that particular issue, one of the challenges is the decline in the fishery and forestry, which is the base of Victoria County. Its remoteness and non-urban nature is not necessarily lined up with the type of tourism we're seeing growth in. As population around the world ages, there's not so much interest in remote hiking types of adventures, those numbers of bodies are declining. Even to depend on nature tourism, unless it's coming by a bus, is a challenge. Therefore, for instance, even in the tourism aspect in Cape Breton, in general, the Fall colours - because you can bring busloads of people and move them in - has been an important tourist source, particularly in the Fall seasons, where you get over the local tourism aspect, but that depends on transportation, and the maintenance of the road, as well as people who stay forward.
So really if you look at what they can do in tourism, or can do, you go back in the community level to assessing what do they have or what can they do which can generate money, a value-added money, not at cost. That takes quite a bit of creativity. The only strength you can have in remote areas these days, that is new, is the technology of the Internet, it's the ability to work in one location and be connected to sort of your partners in that business opportunity somewhere else. We have people who are able to work in remote locations doing high-end service-level business.
You also have to look at the diversity, seasonal diversity, diversity to deal with annual trends. Tourism is up and down, the weather can kill it. A bad Fall season eliminates that Fall colours opportunity. It is very challenging for the remote areas and it's very challenging for government. You have to have the infrastructure, roads, services and such, to attract people in the first place. Maintaining that in a lower population is a challenge. Solutions are going to require a great deal of creativity and people working together, larger proposals, perhaps; very clearly targeted proposals with a great deal of scrutiny of, can you make money at it.
MR. BAIN: I think one of the things, when you mentioned the Internet and people being so technologically advanced today, I think we see that, especially in Victoria County, where you see a number of families or individuals, husband and wife or whatever, retiring there, and they have taken early retirement. I think that's what they're doing, they're setting up their business on-line in a remote area because they are able to do their business, and it's where they want to be. So I guess probably in an area like northern Victoria County, we are going to see more of this than we are tourism and fishing and everything related.
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MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: The communications infrastructure is critical to that, that it not only exists but that it keep up to date with the national and international standards. It's like a slow computer, people get very frustrated when they can't transfer things.
MR. BAIN: Yes, I've been hearing that quite a bit in the last few months.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: So those are the types of planning issues that you have to address - what do you need as the underpinnings to keep the population in the rural areas. It's no less of a challenge for Victoria as it is for Yarmouth or any of the areas where you don't have an existing strong economic core that has some future.
If you look at some of the maps in the Community Counts, and you look at some of the things about income, education and other sorts of monetary statistics, you'll see that they cluster around educational institutions. Such things as even having a community college in a region draws people, it draws creativity, it provides a base for training and education, so there are nodes of things that you can put in various places if you are making priority choices about what you do that can encourage positive things versus negative things.
MR. BAIN: I think one of the things - we have to give Victoria County Council praise on this one - is with broadband. They have taken the lead and are pushing it and are on their third phase now to make all of Victoria County broadband accessible. I think maybe they have a vision and it's along with what you are saying.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: The next step, really, for them is to push business which can work with a remote location broadband and find groups of businesses that can work together.
MR. BAIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Wilson.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a pretty fascinating presentation. You need somewhat of a mathematical mind to actually understand what goes on with statistics. I don't have one, so I generally look from the outside in. I do have one little concern and that is in terms of the data that was collected from the 2006 census, when do you integrate that into this program?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: The data which came out in March is preliminary. It's the first totalling of all the information from the survey at the national level, the actual survey results. The next step is to project the missing data - what would have happened if the rest of the population had filled in those forms? That is referred to as undercoverage. The next stage, between now and September, will be to deal with the undercoverage. Once that is complete and Statistics Canada tells us they feel it's not subject to significant revisions, we will begin incorporating that information as it becomes available into Community Counts, and into our
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stats agency world, the information actually in Finance that we collect from Statistics Canada on the census data. We ultimately begin using it in our economic forecasts and our revenue forecasts for the province.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): How long would that be?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: In September we expect to receive the undercoverage. In other words, a complete, projected, what the world looked like in 2006. That will be sort of on broad numbers. Then below that, the individual, more detailed analysis will start coming out, and it will take years for it all to come out; maybe two years before the full data sets are available.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Just a couple of more questions. How much did the program cost to implement and how many staff are dedicated to this program?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Currently, there are four positions. Two of them are permanent positions and two of them are just casuals. So it has been done on a shoestring resource. In terms of the money that went into it, it was approximately $150,000 to $200,000 a year over the last couple of years. That money was levered, in many ways, through working in partnership with other agencies, whether it be ACOA or the Department of Justice and access money they have to increase the value of that in buying data. Data actually costs a lot of money to put into this from Statistics Canada.
Ongoing, we hope to resource it at, at least, the same levels. It's my job to try to maintain it at whatever I think is needed to be able to go forward. I'm a very strong supporter of the concept. I have worked in geographic information systems before and I believe very strongly in informed decision making, so I do my best to juggle the numbers.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Wouldn't you agree your program would be stronger, your program would be at its best if, indeed, you had more resources; if, indeed, you had more available to you in terms of funds dedicated to the program? I guess what I'm trying to get at, and I will just close with this, the historical data is important but only when it's matched with up-to-the minute data. Can it be used as an economic development tool? Without that, we have a problem, because you are dealing with outdated data.
I can give you an example that I have used for some time now. If I were to look at Statistics Canada right now and tell you that the unemployment rate in Cape Breton is at - I don't know what it is these days - I think it's around 18 per cent or 19 per cent. It's not a true figure because it does not include the number of people who have given up looking for work altogether. Unless you have that information, as you referred to earlier today, from other sources, whether it be from RDAs or wherever you are going to get it, unless you compile that information, the snapshot you take of that particular area is not accurate. Would you agree?
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[10:00 a.m.]
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: I would agree. One of the challenges in this program is to maintain current data, as you said, old data doesn't really help you. What we are looking at is information decisions about the future. So we are trying to make sure the information we have provides people with the ability to deal with future questions, combining it with other local knowledge. We know the reason why some of the statistics on employment and unemployment go down is because people aren't looking. Or, they retire and are no longer really part of the workforce and that's making our statistical indicators look different.
If I were to see where the need is in the future, if I can maintain a base in the department for the Community Counts tool, the need is to ensure that the government departments that compile and collect the other non-Statistics Canada information, have the resources to generate that information and provide it in a way that we can use it and distribute it through Community Counts. That's where the growth - that's where the demand, in my view, is.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): My time has run out, but if you only have two full-time and two part-time people, you've done a tremendous amount of work towards this program with that amount of staff. You don't need statistics to see that.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: You have to be creative.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Conrad.
MS. VICKI CONRAD: First, thank you for the presentation, it's very informative. I know how important stats are to looking ahead to our future.
A couple of comments and then a couple of quick questions because some of my questions have already been asked in some way. First, the importance of collecting that data and keeping it current based on waiting for information coming in from Statistics Canada, keeping our census information up-to-date, that is going to be always challenging. However, the importance of looking at some of the historical data, I think, is just as important to communities to see where the trends were, what happened 10 years ago as opposed to perhaps what's happening 10 years into the future and what are the similarities and what are the vast differences.
So, I think there is some importance in looking at that historical data as well, but more importantly, we have to keep that data updated and that is going to be a challenge for you and your staff in the years ahead. I think you're always going to be playing catch-up.
However, I see a real importance to this system because it will allow the potential for economic growth to either happen or shift away because the potential is no longer there based
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on the statistics gathered. In the future of this data collection, will there be some comparison made to other jurisdictions, other provinces, to see what trends have happened in those places and compare it to our own data to see if there are any similarities or any vast differences or can we learn from other data from other jurisdictions as well and apply that to some of our planning needs?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Through the Statistics Canada data sources, which are - although it's like a Titanic in terms of moving it forward - very comprehensive and include the same level of detail, the same type of statistics on each province and through Community Counts and through our own statistics agency aspect, we have information access to all the other provinces.
Actually, through Community Counts, you can do some of the provincial level comparisons across Canada, what you can't do at this point is community level comparisons. There's only two provinces that actually have gone to a community level data set - Newfoundland and Labrador and ourselves. So you can't do the community level comparisons.
For instance, you can't pick Calgary and say what made Calgary grow historically. That's not available, which is unfortunate because those would be interesting things to learn about. But, on a provincial level base, you're tracking the broad one-shoe-fits-all province comparisons. You can do that.
MS. CONRAD: In terms of playing catch-up to data and taking what data you have at your fingertips and applying that to possible policy or possible service delivery or program installation in different parts of the province or in communities, knowing that you are playing catch-up, is it possible to have that data read incorrectly? Or, that it will be skewed in a way that perhaps policy or programs or services when they are applied will no longer really fit the data as it was read?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: The important thing about numbers always is the numbers stand-alone by themselves do not provide you good information. You have to understand the context of how the number was collected, you have to interpret what it actually means in the policy context.
One of the elements of Community Counts that we're trying to develop is indicator information. Indicator information is sometimes a single source of data, sometimes it is an accumulation of a variety of data sources which, when brought together, are an indicator of something. For instance, as I mentioned earlier, in terms of health outlooks, a combination of income and education, when you put them together, provide an indicator of how healthy you may be in the future. Those indicator data help to compensate for the understanding of individual sets.
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The other aspect that we are trying to deal with through the training is to work with people so that they understand data. You don't want to have to have a degree in statistics, but you want to understand how to use information as a decision-making tool - what you have to do besides looking at numbers, when a number is enough, and when it is not enough. Those are things only training can do. An informed user, particularly for policy decisions - it is one thing for curiosity or general magnitude and direction, but when you're trying to make an informed decision where the line is very fine, you have to understand the data and where it comes from and how to use it appropriately.
So we try to incorporate that and have been trying it with the community development workers, training them about, you know, here's information, how can you combine different sets of information together that give you a fuller picture than if you had looked at this package alone or this package alone. How can you display it so that intuitively you get a better picture of what's going on? What additional information do you need to understand about that community which will help you interpret the data? At that point it is advantageous to have an informed person, a person who knows where to collect the local information and put it in context.
MS. CONRAD: So then your staff of four and the additional community development worker, it will be your responsibility to go out there and train other community members, whether they are folks working with the RDA agencies or the community health boards. With just that minimal staff of four and one community worker, your job will be to go out and train those folks to be able to understand the data and how it applies to their community, at their level, and then the bigger discussion will be had around what services, what programs are needed, based on what we're reading and what we're understanding, that the data - so that's a huge, that's a huge job . . .
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Well let me modify that a bit in terms of, if you think of the concept of a telephone tree - you know, you call and they call - that would be an approach we have to the training and communicating the knowledge is working. We, for instance, through this one project, worked with community development workers who are the people who work in the RDAs, for instance. They then were trained to be able to transfer that to their community boards or their community contacts, who then would learn enough to pass the information on.
When we're working with the other departments we're working with groups of people who then would, we would hope, generate enough understanding of it to pass it on within their own context. We can't simply do it on our own, all we can do is be a catalyst for one interest, which is what we're trying to do first - to generate that the knowledge about this exists, it's a powerful tool, generate the interest so that people will go in and learn how to use that tool and know where to apply it, and then to work through the tools we have and user interfaces to make it possible for, like the "train the trainer concept", we would train people who could train people who could train people. That's the only way you can reach the
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large number of people who can and should make use of this type of resource, or any of these resources.
Even just the challenge in the last couple of months of providing information workshops for the government departments, people who wanted to know and should know, has resulted in a requirement of a huge number of workshops because facilities require a computer and such and only 20 people at a time. We had a lot of interest once we started putting the information out there. However, that passes on and passes on and we'll continue to figure out the most efficient way to support that.
MS. CONRAD: But in terms of policy, programs, and service delivery that ultimately will come out of this data collection, what our needs are in our communities, we're playing catch-up with the data and we have this system where the training will be the trainer trains the trainer trains the trainer, is the potential there to not be reading that data at the end of the day, will there be some people who are trained to read the data, be reading it differently or will it be diluted at some point, that the services or the programs that we're aiming for from this data collection may actually not be the services and programs that we get at the end of the day because the data has been read incorrectly or read differently than somewhere else?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Well, the question you're asking is, to use a parallel circumstance, you have a very expensive tool set that you're going to provide to someone who's going to work on your car. Do you give it to your 17-year-old son and say hey, go to it, you've got all the tools here in this box and there's a manual over here, or do you go to a trained mechanic and say I can enhance the knowledge you have. In the policy world what you really need to have is policy people - and you do - who know how to make policies. They know how to gather information, analyze information and interpret it within the context which they work. This is simply an information tool that they can use that provides them access to something that they didn't have access to easily before.
You still have to have the policy person. The tool - you know, it's sort of like the medium is the message? This medium is only a tool, it is not the element itself to make decisions. It is simply an input to your decision because in making any decision, policy or otherwise, there are many other factors that have to be balanced off.
Even if you look at demographics and then you took schools, if you looked at purely statistics and made a computerized decision about a school, if I have 20 people of this age group, I create a classroom and build a building, then they wouldn't need people, but instead you need an educator, you need a policy person, you need a construction person who looks at, well we know that in this community we need schools in order to keep people. We also know that this is shifting over time - what is the best way to meet that solution? And then you have the intellectual analysis.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Conrad, your time has expired. Just before I move on to Mr. Theriault again, I have a couple of quick questions for you.
One, ease of access to the Web site - you kind of gave a bit of a brief overview when you were giving your presentation - how are you promoting that? It's great to have all this wonderful information and, oh, my God, he really likes numbers, but I really didn't know quite how to find that until you told me this morning - not that I've gone looking either, but how are we getting that out? We're spending some time and some money on it.
[10:15 a.m.]
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: When it was a project, you have different strengths about how dependent you want people to become on it. Now that we have finally in this budget, as a result of April 1st, absorbed it as a program, the awareness aspect is how do you make people aware of it, how do you make it so that you don't have to be writing something down or searching to find it. As I mentioned just now, if you know it exists you can log on to the Web site and find it, but the future requires that we do make it more easily identifiable. It could be on the main government Web site, a logo that says Community Counts. There are various ways that we can do that; we can promote it through various venues. We can provide little cards with the access information. Those are all tools we'll have to look at.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The other question I have is with regard to the census. How accurate do you think the data coming in actually is? I know it's always something, I don't know how many times the folks come around - I know in some places they make a couple of trips. Things are never filed. I'm always curious with statistics how truly accurate we believe that they are.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: The response to the annual, or the every five years statistical survey, the census, is as surveys go very high. There was something like a 60 per cent response rate, which in a survey world is very, very good. The history of the census provides Statistics Canada with some very good tools for filling in those gaps based on the history.
From an economist's perspective, one would say if you have better information I would be glad to take it. There is no better source. There is even no source to prove it wrong; therefore it is the best information we have about the population within the context of what the survey actually measures, a comprehensive sample. There are also, you know, when you get into the deep world of statistical analysis, ways to test the validity, ways to evaluate its accuracy, and the information is considered to be very reliable. Statisticians can take a 15 per cent response rate and turn it into a 100 per cent survey.
MR. CHAIRMAN: So in this case they're taking 60 per cent, which is very good for a survey . . .
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MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Which is very good.
MR. CHAIRMAN: . . . and turning it into 100 per cent?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Yes, and when you layer that on top of a long history of doing census and each census is going to be a little bit different, there are tools there to fill in the gaps at a detailed level, which makes it a very strong source. Canada, having that, is in a unique position in terms of its demographic information for social and economic policy, which other countries may not be.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I find it interesting, taking 60 per cent and turning that into 100 per cent when you look at numbers such as the population, just as one example. One hundred percent of the people are not standing up to be counted - how can you have an accurate number? I know there are pollsters out there and they have the margins of error and these people are very good, I just find it interesting how we can report on 100 per cent of things like population when we are talking about out-migration, immigration, so on and so forth, the future direction, et cetera - is there a better way?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: There is a lot of in-between census counting that goes on. There are various ways that Statistics Canada, which is a huge organization, verifies and validates their information and their tools. They are as strong as they can be. Also, every individual at the level at which data is collected is not unique. There are usually several other people just like you who did stand up to be counted and that ratio is known through historic information. So whatever your height is, and there are several other people with that height, your clothing size can be projected, even though you may not belong in the norm.
MR. CHAIRMAN: What are you trying to say? (Laughter)
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: There are various statistical means of assigning you characteristics which you may not meet.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, I think with that I will say thank you very much and I will move to Mr. Theriault.
MR. THERIAULT: Mr. Chairman, just one quick question and then I have to leave. In your policy development, we know that some of our communities in Nova Scotia are turning into retirement areas. We see it every day. We see our small schools closing up and whatnot. Is there any data, are there any statistics being formed through your policies for retirement areas of this province, and how sustainable are retirement areas for this province? Can you fill us in on that?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Well some of the information you consider - for instance if you take Annapolis Royal, it is a known retirement community because it has attracted a lot
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of people to come from away and retire there - you know, a nice, local community with lots of things for daily activities and a grouping of people with common interests. The issue you would then look at, though, are the other things that come with a retirement community. You would look at the income levels and taxation levels that can support at municipal services; you would look at the distribution versus the rest of the province on health care needs - do they need more clinics, do they need more health care services, and what do they require in order to be able to be sustainable?
From a provincial perspective, or from a local perspective, if you were planning to create a retirement community, what you really have to look at are the needs of that age group in the services aspect, the employment aspect. Many seniors today have to work part-time in order to compensate for the difference between their income and the cost of living. What does that age group need - and you are not always talking about the high-end individuals - in order to maintain? Do they need education? Maybe they don't need primary and secondary education, maybe they need post-secondary education or access to interest courses. Look at the nature of that population and see how well the services that can be provided match that. That is the type of planning or policy development you would have to do at an individual level.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just before Mr. Theriault leaves, I know that Mr. Wilson had a motion he wanted to make within the committee.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): We can wrap this up if you want. He's not leaving right away.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Very well.
Mr. Preyra.
MR. PREYRA: I think I have three or four quick questions. I want to ask you about immigration. I was going through some of the data that the committee was given and I'm wondering - and part of this is the problem with the data set, it's actually a policy problem - I'm looking at immigration population, 1961 to 2001. In 1971 to 1980, there was a net decline of people reporting of 12.5 per cent; in 1981 to 1990, 28.7 per cent and in 1991 to 1996 there is no data for that period in here. Does this actually mean that such a huge number of people have left the province or is it just a problem with the data set? Essentially it says from 1981 to 1990, 28 per cent of those people had left or were not reporting.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: In terms of the shifts in where people want to live, for a long time we've been seeing a movement of the young just graduating from high school, just graduating from college, movement to where the jobs are. Even in my generation everyone went West and in my children's generation they are still going West. However, today what we are seeing is a much greater draw from Alberta. On a national level it is a major concern
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and from Alberta's perspective it is a major concern. So we are seeing a very negative draw on Eastern Canada moving to Alberta in particular and to B.C., so those are real statistics and they're not being balanced off by people coming the other way.
MR. PREYRA: Why would the figures for 1991 to 2001 not be available in this?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: They are available, I don't know which statistics you are looking at. I would have to look at them specifically and check those.
MR. PREYRA: I'm looking at the Community Counts home page on immigration.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: It may be that the statistics are available, they're just not in the Community Counts data set.
MR. PREYRA: I had a question about new questions. How do new questions get asked in this data set, for example, if I want to ask about people with disabilities, how many people with disabilities are in my constituency or in rural areas or what's the sexual orientation of those. Is there a process that you have for asking new questions? I know on the academic side it takes a long time to get a new question put on the federal census form. Is there a process that you follow for new questions?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: We don't look at ourselves as being the providers of those data sets, we buy data or acquire data - within the Department of Finance I'm speaking of. We do have our own sets of data but in terms of those questions, if it's a survey question, the vehicle that is used nationally, of course, is Statistics Canada. If it's an only-in- the-province interest question then it depends on the department whose authority that falls under and whether they need to ask that question, in which case you would have to customize the survey.
There was a time when the department responsible for economic statistics - before the Department of Finance it was the Department of Economic Development - did their own surveys, but surveys are extremely costly to implement. A one-time survey, as pointed out around the table, is only a snapshot and loses its value rapidly unless you can maintain that comparative information.
MR. PREYRA: But as an academic it would be far cheaper to tag on a question to a survey that is being done, a census question even, rather than reinvent that whole process.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Sometimes that is done. For where you have a question that is a one time only question you can tag onto other surveys and there are ways to do that. Often what you are looking at is it's not just a one time, you would like it done on the longer time, you need the comparative data set. A snapshot is not enough.
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MR. PREYRA: A final question, I was wondering about advocacy. I can see this tool become politically charged, especially if the departments co-operate with you - I suspect they won't - but if this data gets more and more politically charged and more up to date, it is still in its fledgling state, is there an advocacy side to it? You mentioned before that you wanted this to be a catalyst. If it is going to be a catalyst the government is not going to be too happy with you if you get into advocacy.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Well, the catalyst is for good decision making. An informed decision is better than an uninformed decision and we stop there at the catalyst aspect. Our own departmental interest is in ensuring government departments have the best information possible for making their own policy choices, and program and service assessments for the business, that they have as accurate data as possible to make business decisions on. A good decision is usually more valuable than a decision that is made on faulty information and that is where the catalyst and advocacy on our part stops. If someone wants to use it for other purposes, like any data, it can be used for a variety of reasons.
MR. PREYRA: To be a real catalyst though, you have to set off alarm bells. A huge per cent of the population is leaving rural areas, 13 of 19 are reporting population declines, people are leaving the province or there's a huge increase in . . .
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: That is the catalyst we've chosen.
MR. PREYRA: Yeah, I mean I use the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, for example, and Elizabeth Beal has done just wonderful work. Even though she's a hard scientist in terms of data gathering, there is an advocacy tone to much of what's coming out of that. I found that very helpful and this has that same potential.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: If there's an advocacy component to this, it's that we have a demographic challenge that affects every aspect of our province, particularly our economic health and future. Those fall within the Department of Finance mandate. Those are very important things for us to advocate on.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Conrad, did you have a question?
MS. CONRAD: No, I don't think I have any particular questions, I just want to say thank you again for your presentation. I will take the time and read through this. I will visit the Web site and I do look forward to an update sometime in the future as to how your programs have grown and how you've correlated all the data from other sources as well.
MR. PREYRA: Can we call you for training?
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: Yes. Our person who was the manager of that program has retired. We are now looking for a new manager. So there will be a little hiatus where we're
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catching up on the training, but we will be providing training to various groups in various ways. That's one of the things to look forward to.
[10:30 a.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much for coming in this morning. I certainly would welcome you to make any closing comments that you would like to offer.
MS. MCINNIS-LEEK: As closing comments, I guess in your roles as representatives of the population, I think it would be valuable or you would find it interesting, to at least go into the Community Counts and search out some of the interest areas you have about your community. There are many things there that may dispel beliefs that you've had or perceptions you've had about the way your community demographics are, your social statistics. It may provide you with information that leads you to ask more questions.
I think you would find it interesting and I do encourage you to check out the site, deal with some problems that you have locally and see if that information informs you and any comments or suggestions you have - you have my contact information - please tell me what you think. It's a development, it needs to be useful. If it's not useful, it's not worth maintaining. You are one of the users. Please take that opportunity.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Just before we adjourn, we have a couple of items of business. One, a motion Mr. Wilson would like to bring forward.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): I would if you want . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Is Mr. Theriault still somewhere around?
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Well, it may not be necessary, I'll make the motion anyway. I know that we, in our caucus, have found it taxing to say the least to try and keep up with committee meetings that are taking place during the sitting of the House. I know that a number of - at least a couple of other committees - have made the move towards moving motions and voting in favour of those motions that the committee not meet during sessions of the Legislature. I'd make a similar motion at this time that the Standing Committee on Economic Development not meet during sessions of the Legislature. I would so move.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Seconded by Mr. Bain. I'm just going to check with the clerk for clarity. We do have five, which is a quorum and we can vote on that.
Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
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MR. PREYRA: I think we would be opposed to that, in part because it would take away our ability to call witnesses that we might need to from time to time. I think we could take that as an operating consideration without actually passing a motion that we not do it. I would like to, I think we would like to have the flexibility to call witnesses, depending on issues that arise, rather than making the blanket motion like that. I'd like to keep our options open. We haven't had time to consult, obviously, because we didn't have any warning of this, but I think we would object to it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Further discussion, Mr. Wilson?
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): I know of at least one other committee and I think that was the Human Resources Committee that voted in favour of doing the same thing. I think they voted also that they would meet for appointments, if need be. If there's a matter of urgency, I can see it. For instance today, for those of us who are from outside ridings, it meant coming up last night, instead of coming up this morning, because we don't go into session until 2:00 p.m. It means time out of your constituency - more time out of your constituency - and if you're looking at the schedule today, then this committee meeting started at 9:00 a.m., the House goes in at 2:00 p.m., sits until 10:00 p.m., everything else that's going on, it makes for one heck of a day.
I'm not complaining about it, but I just think that there are some things, and I agree somewhat with Mr. Preyra as well, that there are perhaps some matters that we'd like to get at right away, but there are others that can wait, that wouldn't be urgent, wouldn't require a meeting during the sitting of the House, and if that can be taken into consideration.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Conrad.
MS. CONRAD: Would there be consideration at some point in time - if we were to pass this motion - to have increased meetings when the House wasn't in session? If the committee felt that we needed to continue on with business at hand and if we have a number of witnesses on our docket to hopefully get through in a period of a year, we'll say, whether or not that would be a consideration?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Wilson.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Are you asking me that?
MS. CONRAD: Well I think it might be something that we would want to discuss.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Every day that I'm in Halifax is a day I'm not in my constituency. Not that what happens in Halifax isn't important, but we have to be here for the sitting of the Legislature.
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MR. PREYRA: Could we put this as a motion to be discussed at the next meeting, perhaps? We're winding down on this session anyway. It's not going to be an issue . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: The session is winding down. Just a bit of discussion on Ms. Conrad's topic. I think that we have in the past and I know maybe not in this committee, but other committees, have met on a more regular basis if need be. I believe we are on schedule with this committee. We have done with HR, as Mr. Wilson has suggested, moved to only appointing ABCs that are required. So those take in very short meetings and we're discussing time frames for those on that committee. I agree with Mr. Wilson, however, even though I am only an hour away, it is very taxing. It is another morning out of my constituency, especially after a long weekend like we've just gone through. There is lots of work to do and I'm sure it's the same for you folks that are even closer. So I am certainly in favour of moving the motion, but I would not be opposed to not moving it until the May meeting, so that you can go back and discuss it with your caucus. But we will vote on it at that time, if that's okay with Mr. Wilson?
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): That's fine by me, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we leave the motion stand, it's seconded and we'll vote on it in the May 8th meeting, when we will see the labour market issues group, as you can see on the agenda. Any further business this morning? Hearing none, we'll adjourn. Thank you very much.
[The committee adjourned at 10:35 a.m.]
