Understanding the Data

Confidentiality and Random Rounding

To ensure confidentiality, the values, including totals, are randomly rounded either up or down to a multiple of "5" or "10". To understand these data, you must be aware that each individual value is rounded. As a result, when these data are summed or grouped, the total value may not match the individual values since total and sub-totals are independently rounded. Similarly, percentages, which are calculated on rounded data, may not necessarily add up to 100%. Population counts are the only figures that are not rounded since they provide no information about individual characteristics.

Area Suppression

In addition to random rounding, area suppression has been adopted to further protect the confidentiality of individual respondents.

Area suppression results in the deletion of all information for geographic areas with populations below a specified size. For example, areas with a population of less than 40 persons are suppressed. If the community searched has a population of less than 40 persons, only the total population counts will be available. Whenever income data are shown, those areas with populations below 250 persons are suppressed. If a community searched has less than 250 persons, the income data will not be available. All suppressed cells and associated averages, medians and standard errors of average income have been replaced with zeros. In all cases, suppressed data are included in the appropriate higher level aggregate subtotals and totals.

Incompletely Enumerated Indian Reserves and Indian Settlements

For the 1996 Census, on some Indian reserves and Indian settlements, enumeration was not permitted, or was interrupted before it could be completed. Moreover, for other Indian reserves and Indian settlements, the quality of the collected data was considered inadequate. These geographic areas (a total of 77) are called incompletely enumerated Indian reserves and Indian settlements. Data for 1996 are therefore not available for the incompletely enumerated reserves and settlements and are not included in this product.