The fact Statistics Canada will once again require millions of Canadians to answer questions in a long-form census in 2016 will make a big difference for planning services for Ottawa neighbourhoods, according to local groups.  "I think it's great news the new federal government is going to bring it back," said Coun. Jan Harder, who chairs the City of Ottawa's planning committee.  City planners used results of the mandatory long-form census every five years to understand how neighbourhoods were changing, said Harder. The data from a voluntary national household survey in 2011 was less reliable for understanding where people drive or take transit to work, which areas have growing numbers of children, and where to encourage clusters of employers.  "We need to know those things. We need to know where it makes sense for investing in affordable housing," said Harder. "The more information we have, the better we can do at spending taxpayers' money wisely,"  Harder suggested new Canadians and people on lower incomes might have been less likely to answer a voluntary questionnaire in 2011, and be counted.  The Social Planning Council echoed the concern that without a mandatory, long questionnaire, it was more difficult to tailor programs for families who could use information on healthy eating, for instance.  "When we go down to a neighbourhood level, with the loss of the long-form census, there was not good data," said Dianne Urquhart, executive director of the Social Planning Council in Ottawa. "Particularly when one is wanting to know what language people are speaking or people who have come from different places, certainly it was very hard to have an idea of that diversity."  She looks forward to having a new baseline in 2016 to know where Ottawa stands.
Planners had a more difficult time figuring out where to put early years programs and transit when the mandatory long-form census was scrapped for 2011, researchers say.