It’s been well publicized that the former two Chief Statisticians in this land were against the Census changes – one of them led the charge against change, and the other resigned in protest over it.

Not surprisingly, their successor also acknowledges the results from a voluntary long form won’t be comparable to those of past surveys:

The results of the voluntary National Household Survey, which will arrive in Canadian mailboxes in spring, “will, of course, never be comparable to census data,” Wayne Smith said in an internal Statscan publication obtained by The Globe and Mail.