Three Builders of Canada's Statistical System

IN THIS PAPER I write very briefly about the contributions of three individuals, J.C. Tach•, A.L. Blue, and R.H. Coats, to the development, from Confederation onward, of a statistical service in Canada. A country may be said to have a statistical service when there is a group of persons within the public service who are responsible for presenting quantitative data for use for analytical purposes by many interests but who are not providing data merely as a byproduct of an administrative process or for rendering account o a legislative or other public body. In Canada, as elsewhere, the availability in administrative reports of large quantities of statistical data preceded the development of a statistical service in the sense in which I use the term. Thus, at Confederation or soon thereafter, the new government of Canada, frequently in conformance with past practice, issued periodic (usually annual) reports which contained large amounts of quantitative data on such matters as public finance, external trade, the post office, rail and water transportation, banking, and insurance. xYet the sources of these data, almost in their entirety, lay in the administrative processes of various public agencies in their functions of conducting public business, and their presentation was suited to the form of reporting to parliament or the legislature. A statistical service goes beyond the provision of the information that we have just described. It may be involved directly in the primary collection of data, or it may be engaged in rearranging or processing the data that arise in administrative processes in a form different from

Geography · Census and Population Estimation

• La révolution des nombres

  Open Access•Jean-Pierre Beaud, Jean-Guy Prevost•Scientia Canadensis Canadian…•2009

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