Kitimat CA / CSD

Question

I am a little baffled about something that's probably obvious. I just printed off two DAuid lists from GeoSuite: one for the CSD of Kitimat (the DM) and one for the Kitimat CA . I got the same list of 15 DAuids for both. I thought this was kind of strange, so I brought up the 2006 Community Profiles for each of these areas. The land area and population is exactly the same for both. GeoSuite confirmed this. Somehow I would have thought that the CSD would be a smaller area than the CA.

Answer

This is the definition of a CA:

A census agglomeration must have an urban core population of at least 10,000. A census agglomeration (CA) is formed by one or more adjacent municipalities centred on a large urban area (known as the urban core). A CA must have an urban core population of at least 10,000. To be included in the CMA or CA, other adjacent municipalities must have a high degree of integration with the central urban area, as measured by commuting flows derived from census place of work data.

It not often, but it happens that a CA is one equivalent to one CSD in which you find the appropriate urban core of at least 10,000 population and that the total population for that CSD is at least 10,000

For Kitimat, the CA is based on the population of the previous census, that is 2001, and the population was 10,285 with an urban core of at least 10,000. It may not be a CA in 2011 since the population is now below 10,000, thus the urban core is now lower than the treshold of 10,000 people.

And yes, the CA is equal to the CSD in this case and beware that it may not be a CA when Geography Division do their revision for the 2011 Census.