WE CAN GET THAT FROM OTHER DATA SOURCES.

began unveiling earlier this year: a population boom out West and a spike in the number of households; a historically high number of seniors; children living at home longer; and more generations than ever living under a single roof, among other things.

Wednesday’s release is expected to show immigrants making up a larger share of the population, with more and more of them settling in Western Canada, along with additional insight into how they, their children and their grandchildren are doing at making ends meet.

The census will also provide details on Indigenous Peoples, whose numbers are growing faster and skewing younger than the non-Indigenous population. Their numbers are expected to be close to 1.7 million with about one-quarter expected to be under age 15, said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics.

After the previous Conservative government cancelled the long-form census in 2010, Wayne Smith, then the country’s chief statistician, was among the senior managers who had agency workers quietly prepare a mandatory survey that would be ready for a government change of heart — or a change of government.

It’s not clear whether the agency will make any comparative use of 2011’s national household survey, a voluntary substitute that was quickly panned due to problems with data quality. Instead, StatsCan is expected to focus on comparing the latest numbers to their 2006 counterparts — a sign the agency would rather forget what Smith called a difficult period that produced a blip in census history.

That blip, however, continues