Mining FDI in Latin America

Question

A researcher here would like to get Canadian mining foreign direct investment into Latin American countries. The following CANSIM table comes closest:

Table 376-0053
International investment position, Canadian direct investment abroad and foreign direct investment in Canada, by industry and country, annual (dollars)

The closest industry is "energy and metallic minerals", but the real problem is the level of geographic detail; the only categories are US, UK, other EU countries, Japan, OECD, Japan and OECD countries, and the wonderfully evocative "all other foreign countries". Is it possible to get more detail from Statistics Canada? Alternatively, can anyone suggest a source that might provide a little more detail, especially for South America?

Answer

One could try the NRCan? (http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/mms/hm_e.htm).
They have statistics, a form to request information, and a link to industry associations (http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/mms/lien/mac_e.htm).

The Mining Association of Canada puts out Facts and Figures
(http://www.mining.ca/www/media_lib/MAC_Documents/Publications/
English/2006_FF_Eng.pdf)
which does mention investments in general - they may have more detailed information if you contact them directly.

SLID 2000 Immigrant Variable

Question

In the 2000 Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics there is a variable "immst15" (immigrant flag). Marginals are as follows:

1 yes 3,641
2 no 11,608
7 don't know 42,192

We're assuming that the "don't know" category should actually be "not applicable" and also that it refers to persons born in Canada. Is that a valid assumption?

Answer

Immigration status is available only for persons living in urban size of 500,000 and higher all other individuals are set to don't know for confidentiality reasons.

Follow up

Is there not some way that another code could be used that could be specifically for "confidentiality protection"? A code of "don't know" should be reserved for persons who indicate that as their response. This undermines confidence in coding.

LFS (Labour Force Survey) 2006 and SPSS

Question

Is it safe to assume that the SPSS syntax file
"lfs-rebased2001-2000-2005.sps"
can be used for 2006 monthly files as well?

Answer

Everything seems fine to use the same code for 2006.

Environmental and demographic data

Question

One of our PhD's is looking to find data at the lowest geographic level possible on as wide a variety of environmental indicators (air, water and soil qualities, climate, etc) and wants to marry that with a wide range of demographics (age, gender, ethnicity, income, etc) at the same level of geography. He'd like the data from the 1990's to the present.

We've looked at several sources but can't really find anything. The Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators provides data back to the 1990s but only at the national and/or provincial level.

Does anyone out there know whether these data would be available at lower levels of geography? He says he's heard of data collected at either the postal code or FSA area, but we haven't been able to locate them.

Answers

1. He might take a look at the paper by Buzelli et al. (2006) in Canadian Geographer 50(3): 376-391 for a method of estimating/interpolating such environmental data at the Census Tract scale in Vancouver.

2. Have you looked at the National Land and Water Information Service for some of the environmental data? The main data page is:
http://sis2.agr.gc.ca/cansis/

You might start with the Land Potential Database. It contains "data about soil, climate, physiography, land use, modelled constraint free (potential) crop yields, actual crop yields and soil degradation for all regions of Canada".
http://sis.agr.gc.ca/cansis/nsdb/lpdb/intro.html

3. Count Statistics Canada out for the data at that level of geography - and even if data was collected at a low level of geography,
it does not mean that it is reliable enough to publish at that level of geography. The counts of respondents plays a very important role in what level of geography is released (census vs. survey).

4. As an added piece of information, the Health Indicators project is working with Environment Account and Statistics Division in order to come up with indicators related to the environment. The major challenges are the level of geography and the link to the standard geography. When you talk about air, water and other environmental indicators, the standard boundaries are not always relevant. This is a challenge that needs to be addressed and in maybe two or three years, it may be possible to see some relevant data being released but not yet.

5. It depends whether the client wants to use an environmental boundary or census boundary. Agriculture Canada will soon be releasing Ag data at the sub-sub-basin level and soil landscape level. But most data are not available at this level.

Also, it depends on the type of data he is looking for. Waste management data, for instance, are only available at the provincial
level due to confidentiality.

6. A few more things your patron may want to look at:

Air quality/pollutants:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/npri/npri_preinfo_e.cfm#dbase

Canadian compendium on common air pollutants:
http://geodiscover.cgdi.ca/gdp/search?action=
entrySummary&entryType=productCollection&entryId=14393&entryLang=en

General ecological:
http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/Ecosystem/ecosystem.html

For climate:
http://www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca/hccd/
http://climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/
http://www.etcentre.org/naps/naps_data_e.html

Workplace and Employment Survey (WES) availabilty

Question

I have a professor looking for the 2003 employee data PUMF for the WES. I see that synthetic files are available through the FTP site - are the PUMFs available?

Answer

There is no PUMF for this survey at this time in the DLI collection. I believe we were offered a version of a PUMF, but it was not overly useful and needed to be returned to the division - I don't recall any of the details at this time.

The synthetic files seem to be your only option at this exact time, but there may be some data from the survey in the DLI collection in the near future.

Canadian Community Health Survey 1.1 Question

Question

I have been using the CCHS data file (cycle 1.1) PUMF and the dictionary for the PUMF. While the dictionary often lists "don't know," "refusal," "not stated" categories the actual PUMF file only lists missing (never not stated, etc.) Is it okay to assume that all those missing are either: not applicable, don't know, refusal or not stated?

Answers

1. The CCHS 1.1 PUMF does include the range of values for instances of missing information: not applicable, don't know, refusal or not stated. We have a version of this file in SPSS that includes these values and that declares them individually as missing.

Is your patron working with SPSS or SAS? I'm guessing that she or he is using SAS. Why SAS? Because of the way users typically assign missing data in this statistical system. For example, the variable CCCA_131 records whether the respondent has cancer. The values and labels for this variable are:

1 = YES
2 = NO
7 = DON'T KNOW
8 = REFUSAL
9 = NOT STATED

I have seen many researchers working in SAS assign missing data
using the following statement in a DATA step:

if ccca_131>2 then ccca_131=.; which treats the values 7, 8 and 9 as one missing category.

SAS does allow specifying 27 special missing values by using a decimal point followed by a letter or the underscore character. Therefore, a researcher could declare each of the missing values for CCCA_131 in three statements:

if ccca_131=7 then ccca_131=.A;
if ccca_131=8 then ccca_131=.B;
if ccca_131=9 then ccca_131=.C;

All three of these values would be treated as missing but SAS would differentiate between the three types of missing information. I haven't seen many researchers take the time to write this much code for all of the variables they are using, though.

2. The most recent versions of Stata includes support for multiple missing values, but earlier versions (before Stata) did not. So if your user converted the file using a program such as DBMSCopy, which converts to an older Stata format, then all of the different SPSS missing values would have been mapped onto a single Stata missing value. This might also happen if she coverted the file to the current Stata version, but used a program to convert that didn't deal well with either SPSS or Stata missing cvalues.

One solution might be to open the file in SPSS, undeclare the missing values, then do the conversion. After this was done the user could then declare the Stata missing values from within Stata.

3. Stat-Transfer, another data conversion program claims to handle multiple missing values. On the first options tab, there's a set of options for handling user-declared missing values (such as SPSS has), one of which is to convert them into Stata extended missing values.

However, I ran in to problems trying a simple transfer from SPSS using a dataset I had on hand - it took three different missing values on one variable, and returned a variable with only two - it combined two of the different values into a single Stata missing value. I spoke with a colleague who say that he's had the same problem.

Another option for handling user-declared missing values in StatTransfer is to "Use none" - this option simply preserves the original values of the variable. On the quick test I ran, this actually worked, and it's quicker than opening the file in SPSS and redeclaring all the missing values separately.

Amount collected by restaurant workers in tips

Question

How much is collected in income tax for tips by restaurant / bar workers and how much do they actually collect from the folks leaving the tips?

Answer

That is a very tough question! The last time Statistics Canada looked at "The Underground Economy" was in 1994...

I did find a handy paragraph that could perhaps be of help:

3.5 Tips

Tips are calculated in the national accounts as a fixed percentage of gross business receipts, varying by industry and type of service provided (3% for accommodation, 10% for meals in restaurants, alcoholic beverages and hairdressing and 15% for taxi). The upper limit of tips missing from GDP due to underground transactions can be calculated directly by applying the same percentages to the estimates skimming of receipts...

Source: The Size of the Underground Economy in Canada, catalogue 13-602E, No. 2, Statistics Canada, p.30. (Gaëtan - don't look at my citation format!)

I would take some time to review the entire document - it has many components which are very helpful.

Although this will not meet your exact needs, it may hold some information to help guide you in your search.