Supplement to Statistics Canada's Generic Privacy Impact Assessment related to Survey on Financing and Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises

Date: February 2024

Program manager: Director, Centre for Special Business Projects
Director General, Agriculture, Energy and Environment Statistics

Reference to Personal Information Bank (PIB):

In accordance with the Privacy Act, Statistics Canada is submitting a new institutional personal information bank (PIB) to describe any personal information about individuals that work for, own or operate businesses, non-profits and other organizations as volunteers, employees, and/or primary decision-makers, collected in surveys or acquired administrative data for use in Statistics Canada's Economic and Environmental Statistics programs operating under the authority of the Statistics Act. The following PIB is proposed for review and registration as an amendment to StatCan PPU 116, Sociodemographic Information on Business Primary Decision Makers.

Sociodemographic Information on Business Owners, Primary Decision Makers, Employees and Volunteers
Description: This bank describes personal information that relates to individuals that work for, own or operate businesses, non-profits and other organizations as volunteers, employees, and/or primary decision-makers, collected in surveys or acquired administrative data for use in Statistics Canada's Economic and Environmental Statistics programs operating under the authority of the Statistics Act. Personal information may include gender, sexual and gender diversity, First Nations (North American Indian), Métis, or Inuk (Inuit), visible minority, persons with a disability, citizenship and immigration status, education and age.

Class of Individuals: Business owners, primary decision makers, employees and volunteers of non-profits and other organizations or businesses that are included in Statistics Canada's Economic and Environmental Statistics programs.

Purpose: The personal information is used to produce statistical data that help provide insight into various gaps in the economy for a variety of minority groups, and serves to inform evidence-based decisions on funding and support for specific groups of businesses, non-profits or other organizations. Personal information is collected pursuant to the Statistics Act (Sections 3, 7, 8).

Consistent Uses: When collected directly and with informed consent, identifiable sociodemographic personal information may be shared with provincial and territorial statistical agencies and other government organizations that have demonstrated a requirement to use the data, and as permitted under the provisions of Sections 11 or 12 of the Statistics Act.

Retention and Disposal Standards: Information is retained until it is no longer required for statistical purposes and then it is destroyed.

RDA Number: 2007/001

Related Record Number: To be assigned by Statistics Canada

TBS Registration: To be assigned by TBS

Bank Number: StatCan PPU 166

Description of statistical activity:

Under the authority of the Statistics ActFootnote1, Statistics Canada will be conducting the 2023 Survey on Financing and Growth Support of Small and Medium Enterprises (SFGSME), which will be the 10th cycle since 1999.

Funded by federal and provincial government bodies such as Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Global Affairs Canada (GAC), and Export Development Canada (EDC), the SFGSME will be collected every three years and is designed to determine the types of financing used by small and medium enterprisesFootnote2. The data collected through this voluntary business survey will be used to produce statistical information on the characteristics and financing activities of small and medium enterprises, including the sociodemographic composition of their owners and primary decision makers.

Specifically, the 2023 SFGSME will ask new questions (marked "(new)" below) about the sociodemographic characteristics of both the primary decision makerFootnote3 and ownership of the enterprise, in addition to the continued collection of sociodemographic information collected in previous cycles, including:

  • Primary Decision Maker:
    • Role
    • Age
    • Education
    • Language learned at home
    • Years of experience in managing or owning a business
    • Years residing in Canada
    • Place of birth
  • Ownership (percentage only):
    • Women
    • Non-binary persons (new)
    • Indigenous persons
    • Persons from a visible minority group other than Indigenous persons
    • Persons with a disability
    • Members of the same family
    • Persons who are 2SLGBTQ+ (new)

Majority ownership will be attributed to enterprises for which the share of ownership belonging to a particular demographic is greater than 50 percent.

The respondent will be instructed that the questionnaire should be completed by the owner or a person knowledgeable about the business operations (e.g., president, chairperson of the board of director, or general manager) who would be able to report on the financing activities and characteristics of the enterprise. In some cases, the respondent for the organization might not be the owner or primary decision maker, and may not have the requested information about their sociodemographic characteristics. As such, all sociodemographic questions include the response options, "Prefer not to say" and "Don't know" and the respondent is instructed to answer these questions to the best of their knowledge.

Reason for supplement:

While the Generic Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) addresses most of the privacy and security risks related to statistical activities conducted by Statistics Canada, this supplement was conducted due to the combination of potentially sensitive sociodemographic information about owners and primary decision makers of businesses, such as sexual and gender diversity, Indigenous identity, ethnicity, and disability, that may be collected by proxy from the business survey respondent. As is the case with all PIAs, Statistics Canada's privacy framework ensures that elements of privacy protection and privacy controls are documented and applied.

Necessity and Proportionality

The collection and use of personal information for the SFGSME can be justified against Statistics Canada's Necessity and Proportionality Framework:

  1. Necessity: Sociodemographic information is required to address the need for more disaggregated data on the characteristics of owners and primary decision makers in small and medium Canadian enterprises. Some of the need for this data is attributed to programs that aim to support strategies for these underrepresented populations.

Questions on women ownership contribute to an understanding of the gender disparities associated to financing outcomes in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). For example, the information collected by SFGSME on financing for women-owned businesses provides valuable data that supports the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) and its goal in increasing women-owned business's access to financing, networks and expertise they need to start up, scale up and access new markets. The Women Entrepreneurship Strategy includes gender equality programs that support women-owned businesses, such as the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund, WES Ecosystem Fund and, WES Inclusive Women Venture Capital Initiative.

Questions on 2SLGBTQ+ and non-binary persons ownership provide a comprehensive view of the socio demographic populations of SMEs and provide insights on their financing activities to support programs such as the 2SLGBTQI+ Entrepreneurship Program, which invests in entrepreneurs who identify as 2SLGBTQI+ and helps address systemic barriers in starting and growing their business.

Questions on ownership by indigenous and other visible minorities support the understanding of financing activities to these underrepresented populations. SFGSME provides valuable insights to programs that aim to provide access to capital, financing, and business opportunities to Indigenous-owned businesses such as the Indigenous Entrepreneur Startup Program and the Aboriginal Entrepreneurship Program, and to black Canadian business owners through the Black Entrepreneurship Program.

Questions on ownership by persons with disabilities provides programs such as the Entrepreneurs with Disabilities Program with data on the characteristics on financing for this population and supports decision making when allocating financial capital in facilitating entrepreneurs with disabilities with access to a network of business professionals, services, and other resources.
Questions on ownership by members of the same family contribute to the understanding of decision-making process in family entrepreneurship as the economic behaviour these businesses may differ from other SMEs in regard to growth activities, sources of funding, and succession planning.

Notably, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada is expected to use the aggregated and non-identifiable information produced by the SFGSME to study the availability of financing to SMEs and recommend policy changes to assist businesses. Other government departments are expected to use this information to develop national and regional programs and for policy planning. Businesses are expected to use this information for market analysis or to compare the performance of the enterprise with the performance of enterprise of a similar size within the same industry. Industry associations are expected to use the information for industry performance measurement and market development, and suppliers of financing for SMEs are expected to use the information to determine gaps in their services.

Ultimately, the sociodemographic information will help policymakers address potential inequalities and disparities that disproportionately affect underrepresented population groups; it will be critical to support evidence-based program evaluation, and continued evidence-based development of the programs highlighted above and beyond, and may lead to the potential development of new program streams geared towards specific groups of entrepreneurs.

Some examples of reports and studies undertaken using SFGSME data on SMEs Ownership demographics completed by ISED or Statistics Canada include:

  1. Effectiveness - Working assumptions: The questions requesting the sociodemographic information were drafted in collaboration with Statistics Canada's Harmonized ContentFootnote4 team to meet the needs of this business survey. These questions are designed to collect information on ownership and primary decision maker characteristics that can lead to the production of statistical information to gain better insights on the experiences of various population groups.

Although the sociodemographic information about the primary decision maker will be associated with an identifiable individual, the information about the ownership will only request the percentage of owners that identify as women, non-binary, 2SLGBTQ+, Indigenous, various racialized groups, members of the same family, and people living with disabilities in order to disaggregate data related to Canadian businesses whose owners belong to underrepresented groups. As such, the effectiveness of the information about owners may be limited, as it may be a proxy response, for which the accuracy cannot be validatedFootnote5.

  1. Proportionality: Without the collection of the sociodemographic information, data gaps in the profiles of business owners and primary decision makers and their financing activities may persist, leaving policymakers without the information required to make effective policies. Collecting this data allows for participation monitoring in order to create baseline metrics of participation by underrepresented groups, which will be used to better understand their participation in Canadian enterprises. This, in turn, is expected to lead to the implementation of evidence-based policies in the financial environment and encourage further participation of underrepresented population groups.

Many of the programs that will use this aggregated and non-identifiable information will do so with the aim of addressing inequalities and disparities affecting underrepresented population groups, allowing for more widespread and equitable participation in enterprise financing opportunities across all population groups, fostering future generations of entrepreneurs and business owners to provide Canada with a robust network of diverse enterprises. As such, the collection of the new sociodemographic information is considered proportional to the potential benefits.

  1. Alternatives: Direct collection from the individuals in the organization through additional screening questions. While understanding the privacy principle of direct collection, wherein personal information should be collected directly from the individual, in this statistical non-administrative context, ensuring direct collection will limit the response rate and compromise the program's ability to produce statistics about these minority groups that comply with Statistics Canada's quality guidelines. Additionally, this method is more burdensome on survey respondents, as it would necessitate the added collection of information about each of the owners when there is more than one, whereas the planned collection only requests the sociodemographic characteristics of owners by percent.

Linking the sociodemographic variables from other surveys or administrative files. Statistics Canada's only linkable dataset that contains these types of variables is the Census of Population, and only a portion of Canadians were asked to respond to the long-form questionnaire where these questions were asked. As such, the linkage rate would similarly be too low to meet Statistics Canada's quality guidelines.

As such, the selected method was identified as being the most efficient way to meet the need for the sociodemographic information while remaining the least privacy intrusive, as only the minimal amount of identifiable information is being collected.

Mitigation factors:

The overall risk of harm to the survey respondents has been deemed acceptable with existing Statistics Canada safeguards that are described in Statistics Canada's Generic Privacy Impact Assessment, such as the following measures:

  • Statistics Canada does not publish any information that could allow the identification of any individuals. Additional suppressions will be performed on outputs to ensure any risk of re-identifiability is mitigated.
  • Respondents have the option not to participate in the survey and can select the response "Don't know" or "Prefer not to answer" for all questions about aggregate sociodemographic characteristics of owner(s) in their organization.As such, the respondent may choose to answer these questions to the best of their knowledge or not.
  • Sociodemographic information is collected only in the context of the business. Statistics Canada will not attempt to re-identify any individuals from the personal information collected.
  • Information will be disseminated at the business level only (i.e., results will pertain to businesses owned by different sociodemographic groups, not about the sociodemographic groups themselves).
  • Respondents are informed that they may provide the information but request that their survey responses not be shared outside of Statistics Canada by mailing a written letter of objection to the Chief Statistician of Canada specifying the organization(s) with which they do not want Statistics Canada to share their data, in which case their responses will be withheld from data sharing with the specified organization(s).Footnote6

Conclusion:

This assessment concludes that the overall risk of harm to the survey respondents or other data subjects has been deemed acceptable with the identified mitigations and existing Statistics Canada safeguards described in Statistics Canada's Generic Privacy Impact Assessment

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