Cautionary notes

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This report contains the results of population projections rather than forecasts. This is an important nuance, because we expect forecasts to tell us what the future will most likely be, whereas projections instead tell us what would happen if the assumptions and scenarios chosen were to prove correct. Thus, this is a prospective exercise whose purpose is more to support the planning of public policies than to predict the future.

In this report, we present the results of five projection scenarios. The sometimes sizable gap separating the results of these different scenarios reflects the uncertainty surrounding this projection exercise. This uncertainty, which is inherent in any projection exercise, is all the greater for Aboriginal populations in that the future evolution of intragenerational ethnic mobility is quite difficult to assess. The limitations of the data available on Aboriginal peoples, described in greater detail in Section 1, also contribute to this uncertainty, as does the variance associated with many parameters introduced in Demosim. These limitations are even more important at the regional level because of the internal migration component and small populations. For these reasons, the reader is invited to consider the full range of results obtained from the five scenarios rather than to try to look for one scenario that is more probable than the others. This is also why data was rounded to the nearest thousand.

Also, it should be kept in mind that despite the sizable number of variables that Demosim projects, this model cannot, in determining the events that it simulates, take account of all the independent variables identified by the literature. This is because for a variable to be used in this way, it must itself be projected, which assumes that it is included (with some exceptions) in the base population and therefore appears in the long form questionnaire for the 2006 Census.

Finally, the data shown in the section "Analysis of results" were adjusted to take into account census net undercoverage and partially enumerated reserves. For this reason, the data included in this document may differ from census data disseminated by Statistics Canada.