Coming to Our Census: The Need for Continued Inquiry into Canadians' Ethnic Origins
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT/RESUME study of ethnic origin continues to be the object of criticism from two groups: those who do not feel it is salient and therefore urge governments not to inquire into it, and those who believe that, when relevant, ethnic attachment represents a threat to identity, thus government should discourage such sentiment. This paradox is reflected in the ongoing debate over whether Statistics should include a census question on ethnic origins. Empirical evidence reveals that ethnicity is relevant to many Canadians. Measuring identity is complex, and examining the impact of ethnic attachments presents several challenges. Research on ethnic ancestry and identity is, however, socially relevant and, when employed in conjunction with other identity markers via the census or surveys, can yield information valuable to policy makers. Despite the increase in Canadian responses to the ethnic origin question, persons of backgrounds other than British or French have not given this answer to a substantial degree. Observers believe that greater numbers of these responses thickens citizenship ties, thereby strengthening identity. Yet too strong a linkage between ethnic and national identity risks inviting precisely the opposite result by creating polarization between, in this instance, those reporting that they are ethnically Canadian and the Others. L'etude de l' origine ethnique continue d'etre l'objet de critiques de la part de ceux qui pensent que cen'est pas pertinent et qui, par consequent, exhortent le gouvernement h ne pas se pencher sur cette question et aussi de la part de ceux qui estiment que, lorsqu'ils sont forts, les liens ethniques representent une menace pour l'identite canadienne et que le gouvernement devrait donc combattre un tel attachement. Ce paradoxe s'exprime dans le debat en cours pour savoir si Statistique devrait inclure une question sur les origines ethniques dans le recensement. Les donnees empiriques indiquent que l'appartenance ethnique est importante pour de nombreux Canadiens. Mesurer l'identite est une affaire complexe, et examiner le s repercussions des liens ethniques pose plusieurs defis. Mais la recherche sur l'ascendance ethnique et l'identite est pertinente du point de vue social et, lorsqu'on s'en sert conjointement avec d'autres marqueurs d'identite utilises dans les recensements ou les sondages, elle peut fournir des informations precieuses aux decideurs. Bien que le hombre de personnes ayant repondu > a la question sur l'origine ancestrale ait augmente, le pourcentage de repondants d'origine autre que britannique ou francaise qui ont donne cette reponse n' est pas considerable. Les observateurs croient que l'accroissement du nombre de personnes qui repondent > accentue la citoyennete et que l'identite canadienne s'en trouve ainsi renforcee. Mais un couplage trop etroit entre l'origine ethnique et l'identite nationale risque d'entrainer l'effet contraire en creant une polarisation entre, darts le cas present, ceux qui se declarent d'origine canadienne et les autres. INTRODUCTION Opening a 1992 North American conference, The Challenges of Measuring an Ethnic World, Canada's Chief Statistician, Ivan Fellegi, declared that: Canada has long been a country characterized by the ethnic and cultural diversity of its population. Our two official languages and our official policy of multiculturalism, to say nothing of our continued constitutional debates involving language, aboriginal and other issues attest to the significance of ethnicity in today (Statistics and United States Bureau of the Census, 1992). Despite this declaration, policy-makers continue to give serious consideration to the significance and measurability of ethnic identification. In this country, perhaps the best example of the ongoing reflection over ethnic identification is Statistics Canada's deliberations over whether to inquire into the ethnic origins of the population. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".