The odds are that unless you are Canadian you probably do not know what exactly is done by the folks over at Statistics Canada. For those of you who are not familiar with them Statistics Canada describes itself as:

“Statistics Canada, a member of the Industry Portfolio, produces statistics that help Canadians better understand their country—its population, resources, economy, society and culture.

In addition to conducting a Census every five years, there are about 350 active surveys on virtually all aspects of Canadian life.

In Canada, providing statistics is a federal responsibility. As Canada’s central statistical office, Statistics Canada is legislated to serve this function for the whole of Canada and each of the provinces and territories.”

The organization has long had a policy of no layoffs, but now, as the agency is facing serious cuts to its budget, they are getting ready to break that rule and be rid of a number of its workers. The policy of no layoffs, which has been the policy of the agency since the 1980’s, has been abandoned. If all goes according to the expectations the cuts will not be small at all. Each of the federal departments has been asked to get ready to cut their budgets by up to 10%.

As for the agencies expectations they are not looking for any special treatment. Wayne Smith, the chief statistician for the agency told the following to a reporter for The Globe and Mail, “Given the government’s fiscal situation, I have no expectation that Statistics Canada gets a pass. My expectation is that we will be asked to make some reductions in our program. We would rather reduce the scope of the program in order to maintain the quality of what we’re producing, than degrade the quality in order to maintain the scope of the program,”
In order to satisfy that requirement the agency would have to cut 13.5 percent, or 725 jobs for those of you who are statistically minded. Currently Statistics Canada employs about 5,000 full-time workers. The cuts are designed to help the government save a total be between $4-billion to $8-billion each year.

The office was quick to stress that these cuts are not expected to impact the quality of the data that is being released by the agency. They also pointed out that reports such as the economic surveys such as the labour-force survey or the consumer price index, would not be impacted by the job cuts. Some of the smaller surveys may be cut down in number, or removed completely, if the budget cuts demand it.

Currently the folks at Statistics Canada conduct roughly 350 different surveys on a variety of topics, which cover everything from instances of cancer to the number of crimes committed and the number of eggs that are produced in the nation each year. They also conduct national census every five years.

When more data is available about the number of layoffs we will keep you posted, with a fresh bout of data.