Video - Statistics Canada: 100 Years and Counting - Michael Wolfson

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Statistics Canada: 100 Years and Counting - Michael Wolfson - Video transcript

(The Statistics Canada symbol and Canada wordmark appear on screen with the title: "Statistics Canada: 100 Years and Counting - Michael Wolfson")

(The question "How would you describe the importance of Statistics Canada data to your work?" appears on screen.)

Michael:

These days my work is mainly research, and it involves building computer models to do things like project the impact of an aging population on long term care, and the effects of modern genetic techniques on more particular cases like breast cancer screening. In both of those examples, we make intensive use of Statistics Canada data; it's absolutely essential. For example with long term care, we start with the population census, and we need to know how many people are living in institutionalized settings. Then we go to the disability surveys to find out what the prevalence of disability is. We go to back to the National Population Health Survey to learn about how the dynamics of disability prevalence changes as people age, and we put that all together in the computer model and move it forward in order to first develop a baseline scenario of what we can expect. But then since this research grant we have from CIHR involves us working with partners for provincial governments and the federal Ministry of Health, w work with them to say: “What kind of scenarios would you like to see, what kind of options?” So Statistics Canada’s data is fundamental to this of kind of analysis.

(Canada wordmark appears.)