Are Harper government budget cuts to blame for StatsCan’s latest error?

Statistics Canada is calling it a "human error."

On Friday, Statistics Canada corrected its July job numbers claiming that we had a gain of nearly 42,000 jobs last month. That's a big jump from the earlier report which stated that only 200 additional positions were created.

The statistics gathering agency blamed the mistake on the false classification of a certain group of respondents.

"During the system change that was implemented with the July release, one program was not updated. This was a human error that resulted in the incorrect processing of some data for July 2014 only," the agency said in a statement.

"Certain respondents that should have been classified as employed were counted as not in the labour force resulting in an overestimation of job losses in full-time employment. Upon detecting the error, Statistics Canada immediately removed the information, and took measures to review, validate and publish the corrected data promptly on its website."

StatsCan says that they've launched an internal review to determine exactly how the mistake could have happened; their findings are expected to be made public withing two weeks.

[ Related: Whoops! Make that 42,000 July jobs, not 200, Statcan says in corrected report ]

The federal New Democrats, however, aren't waiting for the full explanation. They claim that the error "highlights" the true cost of Conservative cuts to the agency.

"Statistics Canada provides information that is indispensable to Canadian industry, yet Conservative cuts are hurting Statistics Canada’s ability to provide reliable data," NDP Industry critic Peggy Nash said in a statement released on Friday.

Indeed, StatsCan has gone through its share of cutbacks over the past several years which has caused some consternation.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada — Canada's largest public sector labour union — released a statement in June deriding the the Harper government's budget slashing.

"This government’s deep cuts to Statistics Canada have left economists and other policy makers without the data they need for evidence-led decision making," their statement noted.

"For example, economists say they don’t have the data they need about the labour market or residential housing. The cancellation of the Long Form Census has left policy makers without demographic statistics they need. Since 2010 more than 1,000 Statscan jobs have been cut. By 2017, the government plans to cut another $142.6 million from Statscan’s budget (for a total budget cut since 2010 of more than 34%), and about another 570 positions – for a total loss of 27 % of its 2010 workforce."

And, earlier this year, auditor general Michael Ferguson concluded that the agency’s Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours — a key source of employment data — was of little use to regions or municipalities.

Ferguson added that, in 2009, researchers embarked on a study to come up with employment data from smaller geographic areas but stopped the study when funding ran out.

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Contrary to the NDP point of view, someone who should know what he's talking about says that the Tories' cutbacks aren't to blame.

Phillip Cross, the former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada said that "it would be a mistake to link the error in the July employment data to the broader changes Statistics Canada has undergone in recent years.

"While some people look at this week’s jobs data error as symptomatic of an organization’s standards wilting under the pressure of too much change, the truth is that data quality is much better than before 2008. It will never be perfect, because both the underlying data and the statisticians who handle it are imperfect," he wrote for the Globe and Mail.

"Don’t use the July employment incident to evaluate how the statistical system is functioning overall. They messed up one data point in one series. Big deal."

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