Charting a blind course to the future
Growing up in B.C.: Report’s authors decry lack of data that hobbles policymakers and researchers
Are B.C. kids better or worse off now than just five years ago? It’s hard to know because of a dearth of reliable and comparable data.
The lack of good quality information is an underlying theme of Growing Up in B.C., a report released Thursday by provincial health officer Perry Kendall and Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the representative for children and youth.
They note that while the report contains vital information, “there are aspects of well-being about which we have very little data ... This is a serious concern.”
Among the “serious gaps” are demographic data and information on families living on low incomes. That data used to come from the long-form census until four years ago when the Harper government scrapped that mandatory reporting and replaced it with the National Household Survey.
Turpel-Lafond and Kendall says the voluntary survey is “not comparable over time and is generally much less reliable.”
This report is only the latest report to outline the impacts of that decision.
But the report also notes that it’s not only the federal government’s decision to stop collecting key statistics that hobbles policy-makers and researchers. Provinces like British Columbia have cut back on data gathering as well.
Other key data found missing is the incidence of mental illness among B.C. children and youth. That was available five years ago when the first Growing Up in B.C. report was published. Now, the province no longer collects the information.
There are also no statistics on the recurrence of child neglect and/or abuse by family or current data on culturally appropriate matches for aboriginal children and youth in care. That all disappeared with a change to the ministry of children and family development’s information management system.
British Columbia also has “no reliable information on rates of mental health challenges or diagnosed mental disorders among children and youth.”
The data challenges don’t end there.
In the report’s section on child poverty, University of Ottawa economist Miles Corak suggests the good news the government points to — child poverty having peaked at almost 20 per cent in 2003 before declining to 11.3 per cent in 2011 — is a mirage based on faulty data collection.
The low income cut-off that Statistics Canada continues to use, he says, is “an outdated and inappropriate poverty line” that “uses a basket of goods reflecting spending on necessities such as food, clothing and shelter required to participate in the society of 1992.”
He says, “This statistic tells us nothing about what children need to participate fully in the society of today, and how this prepares them for the society of tomorrow.”
StatsCan continues with the low income cut-off despite B.C. and other provinces having worked with the federal government to develop the Market Basket Measure.
Using that measure, 21.1 per cent of B.C. children are living in poverty.
Yet even when good data is collected, Turpel-Lafond and Kendall note that government is often loath to share it.
Where there was health data on aboriginal children and youth, there was “a significant delay” in getting it.
With this report, Turpel-Lafond and Kendall join the legion of others who have decried the populist trend toward relying on gut feelings rather than facts.
What’s particularly galling is that continuing with the National Household Survey means paying more — $22 million more last time around — to get worse data.
Yet, the Conservatives used their majority earlier this year to kill a private member’s bill that would have overturned the decision and made the longform census mandatory again in 2016.
They persisted even though supporters of returning to the mandatory long-form census include the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Canadian Economics Association, Vancouver Board of Trade, Toronto Region Board of Trade, Restaurants Canada, the Canadian Association of Business Economics and big city mayors including Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson.
Both the New Democrats and the Liberals have promised to reinstate it, if they’re elected.
Why does this matter? The lack of good data affects every aspect of decision-making from predicting how many jobs, homes and schools will be needed in the future to determining which programs are effective to identifying trends such as income inequality.
Anecdotal evidence may be fine to humanize a story, but it’s hardly the stuff of intelligent policy development.
Without good information, bad decisions get made. And bad decisions are not only expensive, they are heartbreakingly costly in the long term when the lives of children and youth are adversely affected.
Ignorance is not bliss. It’s bad for kids, bad for business and bad for all of us.