2010 submissions

Economic Impacts Analysis of Public Research and Development Performers and Programs in Canada

Purpose: To measure the socio-economic impact of National Research Council (NRC) science and technology (S&T) programs on participating firms. Changes over time in the employment, research and development expenditures, export patterns and other performance indicators of NRC program participants will be compared to those of a sample of similar firms who were not program participants, in order to evaluate the impact of NRC S&T programs.

Description: The NRC S&T client list will include firms that participated in these programs from 2001 to 2006 inclusively. Statistics Canada will link, at the enterprise level, the Business Register (BR), the Longitudinal Employment Analysis Program (LEAP), the Research and Development in Canadian Industry (RDCI) Survey, the Exporter Register and the General Index of Financial Information (GIFI) (tax) databases for reference years 2000 to 2006, to the S&T program participant file provided by NRC. The names and addresses of enterprises that were NRC S&T program participants will be used as key identifiers. A cohort of non-participating firms with similar characteristics to the NRC client firms will be selected for comparative analysis from the linked Statistics Canada files.

The linkage and analysis will be conducted in Statistics Canada’s offices. The linked files will not be available outside Statistics Canada.

Output: Only aggregate tabular statistics and modeled econometric outputs that conform to the confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act will be released outside of Statistics Canada. The linked analysis database and linkage key file will be retained for at least five years, that is, until December 31, 2014, to support on-going analysis; once the file is no longer required, it will be destroyed. Access to the linked analysis database and linkage key file will be restricted to Statistics Canada employees whose work activities require such access.

Canadian Forces Cancer and Mortality Study, 1972 to 2009

Purpose: To measure cancer and mortality risks of current and former Canadian Forces (CF) members related to their occupational exposures. This information will assist the Department of National Defence (DND) and Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) to develop and enhance:

  • DND health promotion and health protection policies and programs for serving personnel;
  • decision-making processes used to assess eligibility for access to VAC service programs and benefits; and
  • services to care for veterans and their families after members leave military service.

The Canadian Forces (CF) is tasked with protecting Canada and its citizens from threats to security. CF members may be involved in combat, peace-keeping and observer missions, post-conflict peace building and humanitarian assistance. The very nature of these operations can pose unusual and uncommon exposures with known and unknown risks to CF personnel. Adverse outcomes, including death, may be immediate or delayed. In order to identify risks, DND and VAC must be able to conduct on-going analysis and interpretation of health information for CF personnel during and after their military service period.

DND and VAC do not have access to complete information on mortality and cancer outcomes of serving and retired CF personnel. Statistics Canada will undertake the Canadian Forces Cancer and Mortality Study to address these health information gaps.

Description: DND will provide Statistics Canada with a list of approximately 312,500 personnel who enrolled on or after January 1, 1972 and have served or are still serving with the Canadian Forces at any point in the period from January 1, 1972 to December 31, 2009.

The records of this CF cohort will be linked to the following files maintained by Statistics Canada: the 1984 to 2010 Tax Summary Files, the 1972 to 2007 Canadian Mortality Database (CMDB), and to the 1969 to 2009 Canadian Cancer Database. Linkage to the Tax Summary Files will assist in the record linkage, the manual resolution of doubtful links, and to verify the total number in the cohort who are found alive at the end of the study period and not lost to follow up: these files contain no income data.

A random Statistics Canada-generated unique identifier will be attached to each record in the CF cohort, as well as to each record in the output file generated by the mortality linkage, and the output file generated from the cancer linkage. In addition, Statistics Canada will attach the unique identifier to each record in a DND cohort work history file and a VAC client administrative database file. This will enable linkage of the output files with the DND and VAC files by Statistics Canada, DND or VAC.

Output: Only aggregate tabular statistics that conform to the confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act will be released outside of Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada will publish a report on specific mortality trends and a description of the linkage process.

DND and/or VAC will be provided with a copy of the mortality and cancer analysis files, without names or other direct personal identifiers, with the consent of the provincial and territorial vital statistics and cancer registrars, and subject to the discretion of the Chief Statistician. The files, which will be linkable to DND’s work history file and to VAC’s client administrative database file, are to be used for statistical and research purposes only, under the terms of an agreement each department will sign with Statistics Canada.

The linked analysis files and linkage key files will be retained by Statistics Canada for at least 15 years, that is, until December 2025, or until they are no longer required, at which point they will be destroyed. DND and/or VAC will retain the linked analysis files indefinitely. Access to the linkage key files will be restricted to Statistics Canada employees whose work activities require access.

Origins of International Child and Spousal Support Cases Enrolled in Canadian Maintenance Enforcement Programs, 2005-2006 to 2009-2010

Purpose: To enable federal government policy analysts and provincial and territorial Maintenance Enforcement Programs to better understand the origins of child and spousal support cases involving international jurisdictions. This will allow them to prepare their responses to possible impacts on their workload of the adoption of the Hague Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance. The Hague Convention was developed to overcome many of the obstacles to recovering support owed, where members of a family are located in different countries. Implementation of the Hague Convention by the provinces and territories may increase the number of international inter-jurisdictional support cases, and this information request will help address this question.

Description: Records from the Survey of Maintenance Enforcement Programs (SMEP) over a period from 2005-2006 to 2009-2010 pertaining to the same maintenance enforcement case will be linked. The linked case records will permit analysis of the origins of cases involving international child support agencies.

Output: Only aggregate tabular statistics that conform to the confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act will be released outside of Statistics Canada. The linked analysis file will be retained until September 2011 to support on-going analysis; once the file is no longer required, it will be destroyed. Access to the linked analysis file will be restricted to Statistics Canada employees whose work activities require such access.

2011 Census of Agriculture to 2011 National Household Survey linkage

Purpose: Linkage of the 2011 Census of Agriculture to the 2011 National Household Survey will provide a great depth of socio-economic information on farm operators, their families and their households, without increasing respondent burden.

Description: The Census of Agriculture was linked to the Census of Population for the Census years 1971, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006, to produce a database of socio-economic characteristics of farm operators and their families and households. The Censuses of Agriculture were linked to both the short form and the long form of the Censuses of Population.

The information previously collected by the long-form census questionnaire will be collected as part of the new voluntary 2011 National Household Survey, to be conducted shortly after the May 2011 Census of Population. Linkage of the 2011 Census of Agriculture and the 2011 National Household Survey will produce a database of socio-economic information on farm operators and their families.

Output: Only aggregate statistical estimates that conform to the confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act will be released outside of Statistics Canada. Outputs will include research or technical papers on the linkage. The 2011 Census of Agriculture to 2011 National Household Survey linked analysis database will be used to produce estimates for dissemination as part of the product line from the 2011 Census of Agriculture.

The linked analysis database will be retained indefinitely. For the 2011 linkage, the linking key files will be retained until at least May 2018, or until no longer required, at which time they will be destroyed. All files will be password protected and kept on a server in a secure area. Access to the linking keys and linked analysis database is restricted to Statistics Canada employees whose work activities require such access.

Creation of a Client File and separate Key Registry: Amendment to Linkage for Purposes of the Longitudinal Health and Administrative Data Initiative

Purpose: The Longitudinal Health and Administrative Data (LHAD) Initiative is a partnership among provincial and territorial ministries of health and Statistics Canada, as well as the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the Canadian Council of Cancer Registries and the Vital Statistics Council for Canada. The Initiative provides a collaborative framework for health research in Canada to help address important information gaps on the health of Canadians and their health-care utilisation and long term health outcomes, through analysis of combined administrative and population health survey data. Linkage of these datasets will allow pan-Canadian and comparative analyses across provinces and territories, and advance understanding of relationships among risk factors, socio-economic characteristics, health status measures and health care utilization.

A Client File and separate Key Registry will be created to reduce privacy risks and to improve the efficiency and quality of the linkages.

Description:The Client File will be created by linking the information on individuals within provincial and territorial health insurance client registries, supplied to Statistics Canada under LHAD Initiative agreements. The Client File will be linked over time, starting from 1992 onwards and updated annually, for each province and territory. No linkages across jurisdictions will be done to create an unduplicated national registry.

The Client File will store the following personal information: name, address, gender, date of birth, health insurance number and a Statistics Canada-generated sequential identification number for each individual identified through the annual Client File linkage process.

Linkage of the Client File to administrative and survey databases held by Statistics Canada will be performed in a dedicated health record linkage data environment (the "LHAD environment"). Each individual within these databases will have a Statistics Canada-generated sequential identification number assigned. To ensure a high level of data security and privacy, the associations of Statistics Canada-generated identification numbers from the Client File and the administrative and survey databases will be stored in a separate Key Registry, thus avoiding the need to store survey data with personal identifiers. As such, the identification numbers will have no meaning outside of the LHAD environment, and will not be kept on the original databases held by Statistics Canada. For analytical studies, the number will be used, in combination with Record Identifiers, to link an individual’s records within and among the databases in the LHAD environment. All such analytical studies will require prior linkage approval from Statistics Canada’s Policy Committee. Only Statistics Canada employees whose work duties require it will have access to the Key Registry.

The Key Registry will contain linkage keys to permit linkage for approved studies to the following datasets:

  • Clinical administrative databases (inpatient and outpatient hospital records, 1992 onward);
  • Prescription drug databases (1992 onward);
  • Birth and death databases;
  • Canadian Cancer Registry;
  • Canadian Community Health Survey (all cycles);
  • National Population Health Survey;
  • Canadian Health Measures Survey (all cycles);
  • Sample portion of Census of Population (1991 onward);
  • National Household Survey (2011 onward);
  • Longitudinal Immigration Database;
  • Summary Tax File;
  • T1 Family File.

Output: No information from the Client File will be released outside of Statistics Canada. The Client File and Key Registry will be used exclusively to support linkage activities within the LHAD environment. Statistics Canada will retain the Client File and Key Registry files until it is determined that there is no further need for them.

Research projects will be approved on a study-by-study basis. These may be carried out as part of an annual research agenda established by the provincial and territorial ministries of health, through the LHAD Initiative, or may be projects initiated by Statistics Canada or its clients. A summary of each approved study will be posted on the Statistics Canada web site.

LHAD has been registered with the Treasury Board of Canada as an institution-specific Personal Information Bank, Health Research (STC PPU 076).

 

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