Geography Files & Social Service Locations Data for Hamilton

Question

For my project I would like to correlate low-income individuals/families with social service locations (e.g. location of homeless shelters) to determine whether there are enough services in poor areas of Hamilton.

- An ArcGIS compatible shapefile that has census tract divisions (would be ideal)

- Shapefiles of (some or all):
         - Location of homeless shelters
         - Location of food banks
         - Community housing
         - Employment centres/job banks "

Answer

To start, homeless shelter data can be acquired from the City of Hamilton, the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton and HRSDC. The database of homeless shelter & demographics is called HIFIS and it is managed by the HRSDC Homelessness Secretariat.  An individual at SPRCH may also be able to connect you with the homelessness coordinator in Hamilton.  The contact at the City, who is a member of the Community Data Consortium, has also been included.

There are no geographic files for shelters, although the Social Planning Council may have done their own geocoding as may have the city. They may not have geocoded women's shelters and family shelters as these are kept as hidden as possible in order to protect the women and children in those shelters.

Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS)
Contacting them here -
http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/cgi-bin/rhdcc-hrsdc/contact/contact_us.asp?section=hifis_initiative
Homelessness Partnering Secretariat
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada
140 Promenade du Portage, 6th Floor,
Gatineau, Québec K1A 0J9

You can also download from Revenue Canada a list of Charity organizations by province which you could also map. More specifically, you can ask Revenue Canada for the list of charity organisations from Form T3010, this will provide you all you are looking for except shapefiles.  You can ask them for Hamilton only or all of Ontario or all of Canada. It comes as an access database.

New files on Statistics Canada Nesstar

Hello

We are pleased to inform you that the following files are now available on the Statistics Canada Nesstar Webview site (http://www62.statcan.ca).

Homeowner Repair and Renovation Survey – 1995 and 1994

Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey (CTUMS) 2010 : Cycle 2 – Household and Person files
Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey (CTUMS) 2010 : Annual – Household and Person files

Anyone can view the metadata for these files on the Statistics Canada Nesstar site.  Only DLI Contacts however will be able to access the data files on the site. If you are a DLI Contact and would like to access and manipulate data files on the Statistics Canada Nesstar site, please send an email to dli-idd@statcan.gc.ca to request a password. Please note that the DLI data files available through Nesstar are subject to the DLI license agreement.

Divorce in Canada

Question

I've been asked for the most recent divorce rate statistics in Canada. Specifically, what the student needs is

"the number of divorces where a custody order was granted out of total cases involving custody orders, and determining if there are any upward trends in recent years."Divorce statistics seem to stop in 2005. According to the IMDB, the Vital Statistics - Divorce Database is still active, yet the latest data release was Nov 2008. The status of the publication Divorces in Canada (Catalogue no.: 84F0213XWE) is listed as "ongoing/available", yet it too has not been updated since Nov 2008. (How can a publication be listed as an annual and yet not publish for more than two years?) Is there someplace else I should be looking, or is 2005 data the best I can do?

Answer

You are right in indicating that the latest marriage and divorce data available are for 2005 and the publication and Cansim tables will be ready shortly. Afterwards, because of budget contraints, Health Statistics Division will stop producing this publication.

That being said, Health Statistics Division is now working on a project for a client on divorce data for the years 2006 to 2008. There will be a brief announcement in the Daily announcing the availability of these data, likely in April. In the mean time, we will pursue with the Division the possibility of having these tables available to the DLI. We will keep you posted.

For marriage data, you will probably have to go the Provincial Vital Statistics Offices. In doing so, keep in mind that all provinces don't report the same way. For example, for same sex marriage, some provinces will report Spouse 1 and Spouse 2 and will not report sex. It is impossible at this point to get uniform reporting.

Updated Products - Survey of Household Spending (SHS)

Survey of Household Spending (SHS) - 2009 standard tables

The following products from the Survey of Household Spending for 2009 are now available on the DLI FTP and website.

Detailed Average Household Expenditure for Canada, Provinces/Territories and Selected Metropolitan Areas 62F0031XDB

• Detailed Average Household Expenditure by Household Income Quintile for Canada and Provinces 62F0032XDB

• Detailed Average Household Expenditure by Housing Tenure for Canada 62F0033XDB

• Detailed Average Household Expenditure by Household Type for Canada 62F0034XDB

• Detailed Average Household Expenditure by Size of Area of Residence for Canada 62F0035XDB

• Dwelling Characteristics and Household Equipment for Canada, Provinces/Territories and Selected Metropolitan Areas 62F0041XDB

• Dwelling Characteristics and Household Equipment by Income Quintile for Canada 62F0042XDB

• Dwelling Characteristics and Household Equipment by Housing Tenure for Canada 62F0043XDB

• Dwelling Characteristics and Household Equipment by Household Type for Canada 62F0044XPB

• Dwelling Characteristics and Household Equipment by Size of Area of Residence for Canada 62F0045XPB

WEB: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/shs-edm/shs-edm2009-eng.htm
FTP: /DissFTP/dli/DLI Coll._Other prod/Survey of Household Spending - shs/2009/data

Thank you.

2011 Census Topics and Release Dates

The 2011 Census Dissemination Project is pleased to announce the 2011 Census topics and release dates.

From the Statistics Canada home page, users can find this information under the ‘Census' header and can access the 2011 Census module (topics/dates presented under ‘Quick links' in the right-hand side bar) or through ‘Latest census data' (census dissemination web module – 2011 Census topics and release dates in left-hand side bar and featured in ‘Spotlight').

Thank you.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012
• Population and dwelling counts

Tuesday, May 29, 2012
• Age and sex

Wednesday, September 19, 2012
• Families, households and marital status
• Structural type of dwelling and collectives

Wednesday, October 24, 2012
• Language

Social Housing

Question

I am having a tough time locating the number of people on waiting lists for social housing in Canada. It appears as though there has been a diminishing federal involvement over time and at the present, because most social housing is either provincially or municipally handled, there is no single central group overseeing it all. As such, I suspect that the researcher will have to use the data collected by each provincial housing authority. Am I missing something?

Answer

Statistics Canada does not collect information on the number of people on waiting lists for social housing in Canada. I suspect that these data may be collected at a local or provincial level or perhaps by other federal organizations (CMHC for example).

Additional Information


Social housing for the most part was downloaded from the Federal Government to Provinces who in turn downloaded to municipalities.  There are a few Federal Cooperatives left but not many.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has worked with 24 municipalities across the country on the collecting of data for social housing which included a survey of social housing waiting lists, social housing inventories, absolute homelessness and the risk of homelessness.

Social housing waiting list data are not collected in all cities, are not collected in the same way when they are, while social housing is not uniformly defined.  Data on social housing waiting lists at the moment is not comparable across time and jurisdictions in Canada.  There is no Federal agency responsible for collecting these types of data.  Sometimes it is the city who collects, sometimes it is housing authorities, sometimes it is community groups.  I have not yet seen provinces collect these data.

There is also no Federal Agency which keeps an inventory of non market rental units in Canada, and that includes social housing.  At the latest CMHC National Housing Research Committee there was a request from the western municipal representative that this be conducted as part of the work of CMHC.  I do not know the outcome of that discussion.

If you are looking for FCM QoLRS data on this topic, it can be found here - http://www.fcm.ca/english/View.asp?mp=1166&x=1115.

Asian Women and Domestic Violence

Question

I have a student who is trying to locate a dataset that links Asian women and domestic violence. We’ve gotten close with the GSS and the VAWS, but the best we can do is visible minority categorized into broad groups (I think too broad to link his concepts). Just wanted to throw it out there in case anyone has come across a dataset that might help….I’m going to check ICPSR, but not sure how successful that will be!

Answer

I do not know of other Statistics Canada surveys that would provide these data. GSS cycle 18 - Victimization (2004) asked respondents to provide specific information about their visible minority status (see p.294 of the questionnaire: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/imdb-bmdi/instrument/4504_Q1_V4-eng.pdf) but, as you have correctly noted, this level of detail is not available in the public use microdata file (PUMF). If the student would like to look into obtaining this information as a fee based custom tabulation, I will be pleased to refer you to an Account-Executive in our Toronto office.

Dwelling Characteristics and Household Equipment by Size of Area of Residence for Canada

Question

Good morning,

We would like to ask whether this product is available as a standard product through DLI (cross tabulating dwelling characteristics and household equipment and size of area of residence) http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?lang=eng&catno=62F0045X

I was able to find the following which have one other of the variables, but not together.

Summary tables:

http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/famil09a-eng.htm

CANSIM tables:

Survey of Household Spending (SHS), household equipment at the time of interview, by province, territory and selected metropolitan areas, annual, 1997 to 2007 203-0020

Survey of household spending (SHS), dwelling characteristics at the time of interview, by province, territory and selected metropolitan areas, annual, 1997 to 2007 203-0019



Answer

This table is available in the Survey of Household Spending page on DLI website at  http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/shs-edm/shs-edm2007-eng.htm (the last standard table in the list) and under /DissFTP/dli/shs- Survey of Household Spending/2007/data/shs2007-62f0041-45-housing-xls-tables/ on the FTP site.

Real estate property database

Question

Hi,
I have a question from a research about an accessible real estate property database that he thinks exist for Canada.  I have found something similar for regions of the United States but not for Canada.  Any suggestions?


Answer
It may be the Canadian Real Estate Association[CREA] databases hosted by the Conference Board of Canada.

Here are descriptions found at: http://www.conferenceboard.ca/products/economic_data.aspx

CREA I.
Starting at $365 per year for a single user.
Canadian Real Estate Association’s MLS database and reports, which contain nearly 3,000 residential housing market time series, are reliable indicators of resale housing market activity across Canada (updated monthly).

CREA II
$5875 per year
Canadian Real Estate Association’s MLS database contains 450,000 residential housing market time series at the neighbourhood level for 16 key regional markets across Canada (updated monthly).

CMHC
Starting at $3.08 per series - volume discounts are also available
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s database contains more than 4,000 time series on the Canadian housing market, such as average rents, completions by dwelling type, mortgage loan approvals (updated immediately upon release).

2006 Census at block level

Question

A researcher requires Census data at the Block level. In addition to population and dwelling counts, he would like sex and age data, by block, and other information about the buildings.  The researcher has identified the set of Victoria CT's and DA of interest.

"Here is the data request, in the researcher's own words:

I have developed a “wish list” of spatial data for the segment of downtown Victoria shown on that map. The attributes of these data are detailed below, and I would like to know whether the McPherson Library via, the DLI, could supply some or all of them. I would require them in an ArcGIS useable form.

The attributes of interest within the study area are:

a. Per city block - Total population, within age, sex (and SES, if possible)

b. Regarding properties
- Legal/street address
- PID
- Mailing Address Postal Code ¨C not really necessary, but perhaps useful
- Zoning
- City block reference lines

c. Per building:
- Construction completion date
- # Dwelling Units
- Footprint area
- Height
- # of stories"

This is what I think I understand so far:
-block level pop and dwelling counts (but not age & sex) are available in the Geographic Attribute File and in GeoSuite
-for all other census characteristics (includig age and sex), the lowest level of geography available to the DLI is the Dissemination Area.
-census boundary files are available for dissemination blocks

Please advise me how best to direct the researcher.


Answer

You are absolutely right in what can be obtained at block level and what can be obtained at DA level. He may be able to get the number of dwelling by type of dwellings at the DA level but because of rounding and suppression, the information may, in some cases, not be what the researcher expects.

There is also a variable that indicates the structural type of dwelling (see http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/english/census06/reference/dictionary/dwe013.cfm) the period of construction, and other characteristics (see http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/english/census06/reference/dictionary/dwetoc.cfm) but this is it.

Hope this helps

Socio-economic data for small geographic levels

Question

A bit of a broad question, but I’m more looking for advice on how to proceed rather than references to specific datasets (though the latter are always welcome!).
I have a faculty member engaged in research looking at expectant mothers’ distance to hospitals in Canada. He is working with CIHI to obtain hospital administration data by postal code. He would also like to develop a ‘vulnerability’ factor using socio-economic variables (income, crime, education). Because it has to match the CIHI data, geography is the most important variable. I have a vague understanding that census data is not available at the DA level unless it’s aggregated. Is this true? Are there other sources I should be looking at for DA level social-economic variables?
Thanks for your help. On the plus side, more questions I can’t answer means more complex data use is happening here!


Answer
The Census BST data, including average income and various education measures, are available through the DLI at the DA level. This data can then be matched to Postal Code data through the Postal Code conversion files. Crime data is more challenging. There is a Sociology Professor here at McGill who is developing an crime index measurement for all the census tracts in Canada. He has made use of the PCensus Crime Risk Data (CAP Index), which as I remember is also at the CT level. It might be that the mapping that Professor Burgos has been doing could be of interest to your researcher.

GSS Data

Question

I have a faculty member who is looking for some data from the GSS.

1) Update from a recent General Social Survey: In 1995, General Social Survey : 73% of women and 68% of men agreed both spouses should contribute to household income.  Need more up to date information..

2) Update from a recent General Social Survey: In 1995, 59 % of men and 67% of women said a preschool child was likely to suffer if both parent were employed. Again, need more current information.

I’ve tried looking but does a more recent General Social Survey have any responses along these lines. If not exactly, close?


Answer

Those questions for Cycle 10 were both dropped for Cycle 15 (see Appendix L of the Cycle 15 User Guide for a comparison between Cycle 10 and 15 questions).

I looked in the User's Guides/Questionnaires for both Cycles 15 and 20 and didn't see anything equivalent.  The closest I found were:

DRW_Q113 (Cycle 20) - "Some parents stay at home with their children while others return to work.  Why didn't you return to work?  Was it because...you wanted to raise your child yourself?"

NLW_Q115 (Cycle 20) - "There can be many reasons why people do not take leave after the birth/adoption of a child.  Why did you not take any time off?  Was it because...you did not want to compromise your career?"

VA_Q070 (Cycle 15) - "In order for YOU to be happy in life, is it very important, important, not very important or not at all important to be able to take a paying job either outside or inside the home?"

Sorry I couldn't be of any further assistance.