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Statistics presented are derived from a survey of nine Provincial Research Organizations (PRO): the InNOVAcorp (formerly the Nova Scotia Research Foundation Corporation), the New Brunswick Research and Productivity Council, the "Centre de recherche industrielle du Québec (CRIQ)", the Industrial Technology Centre (Manitoba) (formerly the Economic Innovation and Technology Council), the Saskatchewan Research Council, the Alberta Research Council, the Yukon Research Institute, the NUNAVUT Research Institute (formerly the Science Institute of the Northwest Territories) and the Aurora Research Institute.

Businesses have embraced the use of information and communications technologies such as e-mail, and the Internet and the personal computer or PC are widely used in most businesses. Use of computers among enterprises was high at 81.9%. The Internet, originally designed as a communications medium for researchers, is now being adopted by many other groups. The Internet was used by 52.8% of enterprises and these enterprises accounted for three-quarters of economic activity.

The proportion of enterprises with Web sites was 21.7% and these enterprises account for 44.8% of economic activity for the private sector. Among other uses, the Internet was used to purchase goods and services by 13.8% of enterprises and by 10.1% to sell goods and services. Significant variation exists in the levels of information and communications technologies use across industries.

The public sector is a model user of information and communications technologies. The proportion of institutions in public health, education, and federal and provincial governments using the Internet and e-mail, and having Internet Web sites is significantly higher than it is for the private sector. Over 95 % of institutions in the public sector use the Internet, 96.6% use e-mail and 69.2% have an Internet Web site.

The volume of Internet-based sales reported was $4.4 billion, of which $4.2 billion was for the private sector and $200 million for the public sector. Total private sector Internet based sales accounted for 0.2% of economic activity in terms of total operating revenue.

For non-Internet users the most important reason for not using the Internet to purchase or sell goods or services was the belief that their goods or services do not lend themselves to concluding transactions over the Internet. Among Internet users, the most popular reason given for not using the Internet to purchase or sell was that they prefer to maintain their current business model.

This article compares the characteristics of the 10 largest independent film and video producers, as measured by production revenues, with all the others, over a 10-year period starting in 1988/89.

The economy was strong in 1999 and while consumers were interested in big-ticket items such as automobiles in the first quarter of the year their attention turned to services later in the year.

Canadians exhibited a dramatic shift in their sport participation rate from 1992 to 1998. According to the latest information released from Statistics Canada's General Social Survey (GSS), fewer Canadians aged 15 years and older reported participating in a sport in 1998 than six years earlier (down almost 11 percentage points).

In 1999, as part of its General Social Survey program, Statistics Canada conducted a survey on victimization and public perceptions of crime and the justice system. It was the third time that the General Social Survey (GSS) had examined victimization - previous surveys were conducted in 1993 and 1988.

For the 1999 survey, interviews were conducted by telephone with approximately 26,000 people, aged 15 and older, living in the 10 provinces. Respondents were asked for their opinions concerning the level of crime in their neighbourhood, their fear of crime and their views concerning the performance of the justice system. They were also asked about their experiences with criminal victimization. Those respondents who had been victims of a crime in the previous 12 months were asked for detailed information on each incident, including when and where it occurred; whether the incident was reported to the police; and how they were affected by the experience.

This Juristat presents an overview of the findings of the 1999 General Social Survey and makes comparisons to results from 1993 and 1988.

Retirement issues have risen to the forefront of socio-economic debate in Canada through the nineties and will likely gain importance as we enter the new millennium. Employer pension plans are one of the primary programs in place to provide workers with income after retirement.

Pension plans in Canada: statistical highlights and key tables presents information on the terms, conditions and membership on all employers sponsored pension plans in Canada. This supplement to publication Pension plans in Canada (74-401-XIB) provides analysis and data on registered pension plans. The topics covered include province of employment, labour force/paid workers coverage, type of plan (defined benefit and defined contributions), size of plan, public and private sectors, contributory and non-contributory plans, employee and employer contributions.

This publication presents current and constant price estimates of provincial gross domestic product (GDP) for over 50 industries covering the entire Canadian economy, including aggregates and special industry groupings. The document also includes a comprehensive analytical review of the economy of each province and territory with summary text, tables and charts.

This article looks at the fast-growing Computer Services industry in Canada, with a particular focus on software developers, data processing firms, systems consultants, and Internet service providers.

This article examines trends in teenage pregnancy in Canada, focussing on induced abortions, live births and fetal loss among women aged 15 to 19 in 1997.

With this working paper, Statistics Canada is releasing 1991 Census data tabulated by a new geographic classification called "census metropolitan area and census agglomeration influenced zones", or MIZ. This classification applies to census subdivisions (municipalities) that lie outside census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations. This part of Canada covers 96% of the country's total land mass and contains 22% of its population, yet up to now we have been limited in our means of differentiating this vast area. The MIZ classification shows the influence of census metropolitan areas (CMA) and census agglomerations (CA) on surrounding census subdivisions as measured by commuting flows based on 1991 Census place of work data. This version of the MIZ classification also incorporates a preliminary version of a north concept that flags census subdivisions according to their location in the north or south of Canada.

The series of tables presented here show detailed demographic, social and economic characteristics for Canada as a whole, for the six major regions of Canada, and for individual provinces and territories. Within each table, the data are subdivided into five categories: census metropolitan area or census agglomeration, strong MIZ, moderate MIZ, weak MIZ and no MIZ. Within each of these categories, the data are further subdivided into north and south.

Readers are invited to review and use the data tables to assess whether this combined MIZ and north/south classification of non-CMA/CA areas provides sufficient detail to support data analysis and research. The intent of this MIZ classification is to reveal previously hidden data detail and thereby help users address issues related to this vast geographic area.

This is the first of three related Geography working papers (catalogue no. 92F0138MPE). The second working paper (no. 2000-2, 92F0138MPE00002) provides background information about the methodology used to delineate the MIZ classification. The third working paper (no. 2000-3, 92F0138MPE00003) describes the methodology used to define a continuous line across Canada that separates the north from the south to further differentiate the MIZ classification.

This release provides data on the Research and development activities of the private non-profit sector. Although the contribution of this sector to the national R&D effort is small in dollar terms, its impact, particularly in the university sector, is significant.Questionnaires were mailed to 94 private non-profit organizations thought to be supporting Research and development activities. Twenty organizations reported performing Research and development.

The international Adult Literacy Survey of 1994 is an important source of information about the literacy levels of Canadians as well as the factors that can explain the disparities between certain sub-populations. The current study shows and tries to explain some of the disparities between Francophones and Anglophones in Canada.

The higher education sector is composed of "all universities, colleges of technology and other institutes of post-secondary education, whatever their source of finance or legal status. It also includes all research institutes, experimental stations and clinics operating under the direct control of, or administered by, or associated with higher education establishments."

Gross domestic expenditures on research and development (GERD) represents total R&D expenditures performed in a country's national territory during a given year. GERD includes research and development performed within a country and funded from abroad but excludes payments sent abroad for research and development performed in other countries.

This report provides an overview of residential, business and 'other' break and enter (B & E) offences in Canada, including trends at the national, provincial and metropolitan area levels, as well as characteristics of B & E incidents, accused persons and victims. In addition the offence known as "home invasion" is also discussed. Data are examined from both the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey and the General Social Survey (GSS) on victimization. Data from both youth and adult court are examined to look at the types of sentences being given to persons convicted of B & E offences.

This paper attempts to quantify the magnitude of economic disparity among Canadian provinces. It uses the average annual earning of a province as an indicator of economic well-being for that province.

In this paper, we use census tract data to analyse changes in neighbourhood income inequality and residential economic segregation in the eight largest Canadian cities during the 1980-95 period. Is the income gap between richer and poorer neighbourhoods rising? Are high and low-income families increasingly clustered in economically homogeneous neighbourhoods? The main results are an elaboration of the spatial implications of the well documented changes that have occurred in family income and earnings inequality since 1980. We find that between neighbourhood family income (post-transfer/pre-tax) inequality rose in all cities driven by a substantial rise in neighbourhood (employment) earnings inequality. Real average earnings fell, sometimes dramatically, in low-income neighbourhoods in virtually all cities while rising moderately in higher income neighbourhoods. Strikingly, social transfers, which were the main factor stabilizing national level income inequality in the face of rising earnings inequality, had only a modest impact on changes in neighbourhood inequality. Changes in the neighbourhood distribution of earnings signal significant change in the social and economic character of many neighbourhoods. Employment was increasingly concentrated in higher income communities and unemployment in lower income neighbourhoods. Finally, we ask whether neighbourhood inequality rose primarily as a result of rising family income inequality in the city as a whole or because families were increasingly sorting themselves into "like" neighbourhoods so that neighbourhoods were becoming more economically homogeneous (economic "segregation"). We find that economic spatial segregation increased in all cities and was the major factor behind rising neighbourhood inequality in four of the eight cities. A general rise in urban family income inequality was the main factor in the remaining four cities.

Historically, female employment rates in rural areas have been significantly below the rates for women in urban areas (Bollman, 1991; Fuguitt, Brown and Beale, 1989). The objective of this paper is to explore some of the factors associated with these rural-urban differences in female employment rates.

Based on 1997 results from the Traveller Accommodation Survey, it profiles Canada's hotels and motor hotels industry. Relative measures of the industry's characteristics, performance and workforce are presented with some information specific to small, medium, and large-sized establishments. The data indicate that, for a variety of reasons, large-sized hotels and motor hotels outperform other establishments in the industry.

This article looks at Canadians' incomes and expeditures in the 20th century.

Much work on probabilistic methods of linkage can be found in the statistical literature. However, although many groups undoubtedly still use deterministic procedures, not much literature is available on these strategies. Furthermore there appears to exist no documentation on the comparison of results for the two strategies. Such a comparison is pertinent in the situation where we have only non-unique identifiers like names, sex, race etc. as common identifiers on which the databases are to be linked. In this work we compare a stepwise deterministic linkage strategy with the probabilistic strategy, as implemented in AUTOMATCH, for such a situation. The comparison was carried out on a linkage between medical records from the Regional Perinatal Intensive Care Centers database and education records from the Florida Department of Education. Social security numbers, available in both databases, were used to decide the true status of the record pair after matching. Match rates and error rates for the two strategies are compared and a discussion of their similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses is presented.

The fusion sample obtained by a statistical matching process can be considered a sample out of an artificial population. The distribution of this artificial population is derived. If the correlation between specific variables is the only focus the strong demand for conditional independence can be weakened. In a simulation study the effects of violations of some assumptions leading to the distribution of the artificial population are examined. Finally some ideas concerning the establishing of the claimed conditional independence by latent class analysis are presented.

Following the problems with estimating underenumeration in the 1991 Census of England and Wales the aim for the 2001 Census is to create a database that is fully adjusted to net underenumeration. To achieve this, the paper investigates weighted donor imputation methodology that utilises information from both the census and census coverage survey (CCS). The US Census Bureau has considered a similar approach for their 2000 Census (see Isaki et al 1998). The proposed procedure distinguishes between individuals who are not counted by the census because their household is missed and those who are missed in counted households. Census data is linked to data from the CCS. Multinomial logistic regression is used to estimate the probabilities that households are missed by the census and the probabilities that individuals are missed in counted households. Household and individual coverage weights are constructed from the estimated probabilities and these feed into the donor imputation procedure.

To reach their target audience efficiently, advertisers and media planners need information on which media their customers use. For instance, they may need to know what percentage of Diet Coke drinkers watch Baywatch, or how many AT&T customers have seen an advertisement for Sprint during the last week. All the relevant data could theoretically be collected from each respondent. However, obtaining full detailed and accurate information would be very expensive. It would also impose a heavy respondent burden under current data collection technology. This information is currently collected through separate surveys in New Zealand and in many other countries. Exposure to the major media is measured continuously, and product usage studies are common. Statistical matching techniques provide a way of combining these separate information sources. The New Zealand television ratings database was combined with a syndicated survey of print readership and product usage, using statistical matching. The resulting Panorama service meets the targeting information needs of advertisers and media planners. It has since been duplicated in Australia. This paper discusses the development of the statistical matching framework for combining these databases, and the heuristics and techniques used. These included an experiment conducted using a screening design to identify important matching variables. Studies evaluating and validating the combined results are also summarized. The following three major evaluation criteria were used; accuracy of combined results, statibility of combined results and the preservation of currency results from the component databases. The paper then discusses how the prerequisites for combining the databases were met. The biggest hurdle at this stage was the differences between the analysis techniques used on the two component databases. Finally, suggestions for developing similar statistical matching systems elsewhere will be given.

Data fusion as discussed here means to create a set of data on not jointly observed variables from two different sources. Suppose for instance that observations are available for (X,Z) on a set of individuals and for (Y,Z) on a different set of individuals. Each of X, Y and Z may be a vector variable. The main purpose is to gain insight into the joint distribution of (X,Y) using Z as a so-called matching variable. At first however, it is attempted to recover as much information as possible on the joint distribution of (X,Y,Z) from the distinct sets of data. Such fusions can only be done at the cost of implementing some distributional properties for the fused data. These are conditional independencies given the matching variables. Fused data are typically discussed from the point of view of how appropriate this underlying assumption is. Here we give a different perspective. We formulate the problem as follows: how can distributions be estimated in situations when only observations from certain marginal distributions are available. It can be solved by applying the maximum entropy criterium. We show in particular that data created by fusing different sources can be interpreted as a special case of this situation. Thus, we derive the needed assumption of conditional independence as a consequence of the type of data available.

The effect of the environment on health is of increasing concern, in particular the effects of the release of industrial pollutants into the air, the ground and into water. An assessment of the risks to public health of any particular pollution source is often made using the routine health, demographic and environmental data collected by government agencies. These datasets have important differences in sampling geography and in sampling epochs which affect the epidemiological analyses which draw them together. In the UK, health events are recorded for individuals, giving cause codes, a data of diagnosis or death, and using the unit postcode as a geographical reference. In contrast, small area demographic data are recorded only at the decennial census, and released as area level data in areas distinct from postcode geography. Environmental exposure data may be available at yet another resolution, depending on the type of exposure and the source of the measurements.

As the population ages, a greater demand for long-term care services and, in particular, nursing homes is expected. Policy analysts continue to search for alternative, less costly forms of care for the elderly and have attempted to develop programs to delay or prevent nursing-home entry. Health care administrators required information for planning the future demand for nursing-home services. This study assesses the relative importance of predisposing, enabling, and need characteristics in predicting and understanding nursing-home entry.

A population needs-based health care resource allocation model was developed and applied using age, sex and health status of populations to measure population need for health care in Ontario. To develop the model, provincial data on self-assessed health and health service utilization by age and sex from 62,413 respondents to the 1990 Ontario Health Survey (OHS) were used in combination with provincial health care expenditure data for the fiscal year 1995/96 by age and sex. The model was limited to the services that were covered in the OHS (general practitioner, specialist physician, optometry, physiotherapy, chiropractic and acute hospital). The distribution of utilization and expenditures between age-sex-health status categories was used to establish appropriate health care resource shares for each age-sex-health status combination. These resource shares were then applied to geographic populations using age, sex and health status data from the OHS together with more recent population estimates to determine the needs-based health care resource allocation for each area. Total dollar allocations were restricted to sum to the 1995/96 provincial budget and were compared with 1995/96 allocations to determine the extent to which Ontario allocations are consistent with the relative needs of the area populations.

To augment the amount of available information, data from different sources are increasingly being combined. These databases are often combined using record linkage methods. When there is no unique identifier, a probabilistic linkage is used. In that case, a record on a first file is associated with a probability that is linked to a record on a second file, and then a decision is taken on whether a possible link is a true link or not. This usually requires a non-negligible amount of manual resolution. It might then be legitimate to evaluate if manual resolution can be reduced or even eliminated. This issue is addressed in this paper where one tries to produce an estimate of a total (or a mean) of one population, when using a sample selected from another population linked somehow to the first population. In other words, having two populations linked through probabilistic record linkage, we try to avoid any decision concerning the validity of links and still be able to produce an unbiased estimate for a total of the one of two populations. To achieve this goal, we suggest the use of the Generalised Weight Share Method (GWSM) described by Lavallée (1995).

The application of dual system estimation (DSE) to matched Census / Post Enumeration Survey (PES) data in order to measure net undercount is well understood (Hogan, 1993). However, this approach has so far not been used to measure net undercount in the UK. The 2001 PES in the UK will use this methodology. This paper presents the general approach to design and estimation for this PES (the 2001 Census Coverage Survey). The estimation combines DSE with standard ratio and regression estimation. A simulation study using census data from the 1991 Census of England and Wales demonstrates that the ratio model is in general more robust than the regression model.