OTTAWA—As now-resigned Statistics Canada chief Munir Sheikh was poised to speak publicly about why he quit, the government-appointed advisory board that provides direction for StatsCan came out against Stephen Harper’s census approach.

The National Statistics Council issued an urgent call for the federal Conservatives to reconsider their decision to scrap the mandatory, long-form census.

The council, a 40-member volunteer advisory group whose members are selected by the federal government, said the Prime Minister’s decision would undermine the value of the information that Canadian businesses, governments and social agencies rely on to plan their programs and invest private and taxpayers’ dollars.

Loss of data from the mandatory, long-form census in 2011 would leave “a serious gap” in monitoring the economic and social changes occurring in society while “depriving Canadians of the statistics they need for informed decision-making,” said Ian McKinnon, chair of the council.

The council said it will become more difficult to assemble needed information on traditionally harder-to-reach groups such immigrants, young people and aboriginals living in cities.

A national controversy has erupted since last month over the Harper government’s changes to the census process. In the past, while all households received the basic eight-question census form, one in five households were asked to fill out a longer, 61-question version of the census seeking additional information on education, employment, disabilities, ethnicity and other topics. The request to complete the long form was backed up with the threat of jail time or fines.

But the Conservatives say it was a heavy-handed intrusion and are replacing the 61-question mandatory form with a voluntary National Household Survey. To compensate for the fact that fewer respondents are likely to cooperate on a voluntary basis, the government plans to distribute the new household survey to one in three households.

But the move has drawn complaints from city officials, educators, provincial governments, economists and a wide range of agencies that rely on the information generated over the years by the mandatory long form.

Sheikh, the head of StatsCan, made the stunning decision to resign his post last week in protest against the government’s decision. He will break his silence on the issue Tuesday when he appears at the Commons industry committee during a specially arranged day of hearings intended to air both sides of the debate over the long-census form. Industry Minister Tony Clement will also field questions from MPs.

In a statement Tuesday, the National Statistics Council said, “We believe that the changes will harm the integrity and quality of the Canadian statistical system.”

It said the changes proposed by Harper “will likely result in Statistics Canada’s not being able to publish robust, detailed information for neighbourhoods, towns or rural areas.

“Much of the analytic work done by municipalities, private firms, health agencies, highway and transportation planners, school boards and large numbers of other groups that depend upon small-area knowledge and data will no longer be possible,” the council said.

The council also suggested that changing the census approach could render decades of information-gathering about Canadians useless because the lack of reliable “benchmark” data.

Don Drummond, the respected Toronto economist who is a member of the council, said he was surprised not to have been consulted in advance by Clement, who is responsible for StatsCan.

“The decision is troubling, but certainly from the perspective of the advisory council, the process is shocking because we were appointed by the ministry of industry to advise on statistical matters. And not only were we not given an opportunity to advise on it, we weren’t even informed about it,” Drummond said.

Of the voluntary form, he said, “If it turns out badly, we’ll have nothing. We’ll never be able to bridge the data from 2006 and earlier.”

The government maintains that the 61-question census includes questions that impinge on the privacy of the households that receive it and that penalties for not filling out the census were too harsh.

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Responding to those concerns, the council recommended that jail sentences be removed as a possible punishment for those who refuse to complete the long questionnaire and that the series of census questions on “household activities” — the area of questioning that has raised privacy concerns — be dropped from the survey.

Also, the council said all questions for the next census in 2016 should be reviewed to ensure they are needed and not overly intrusive.

The National Statistics Council was appointed in 1985 to help Statistics Canada set priorities and fine-tune its programs.

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