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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.

The third edition of Canadian culture in perspective: a statistical overview, provides a comprehensive statistical portrait of the health and vitality of cultural activities and industries in Canada. This compendium incorporates data from all surveys in Statistics Canada's Culture Statistics Program, as well as data from other internal and external sources, enabling readers to track various themes and trends over time.

This edition contains sections on: the economic impact of the culture sector, culture activities by tourists and the international trade position of the culture sector; on social dimensions of culture, including characteristics of the cultural labour force, philanthropic behaviour, and the consumers of cultural goods and services; and on various sectors such as heritage, the performing arts and festivals, visual arts and libraries. It also explores ownership and content issues in the culture industries (publishing, film, broadcasting and music).

Canada's ports handled a record 382.0 million tonnes (Mt.) of cargo in 1999 and a record of 2.2 million TEURS (twenty-foot-equivalent units) of containers.

Third quarter 1999 operating ratios for top carriers improved by one point over the same period one year earlier to 0.93 but were unchanged in the fourth quarter (0.94). Average revenue per carrier grew by 3% in the third quarter and 4% in the fourth quarter.

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.

The Vancouver-San Francisco market experienced the largest year-over-year increase in passengers of all the major markets between 1997 and 1998. Toronto-Milwaukee was the mid-sized market which experienced the largest year-over-year increase, with 25,520 more passengers in 1998 than 1997.

The volume of air travel between the Canadian cities and American states presented in Text Table 2.1 generally reflects the underlying large inter-city markets.

The Canada-United States Open Skies Agreement, which was signed on February 24 1995, transformed the regulatory environment for air services between two countries. Text Table 3.1 shows the changes in the level of travel between the U.S. and the eight most-frequented Canadian cities since 1995.

Scheduled air trips to or from Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta represented a greater proportion of total Canada-United States air travel than residents of these provinces represented of the total Canadian population. Alberta residents represented 9.6% of Canada's total population in 1998, while Alberta represented 11.8% of the total number of Canada-U.S. air travellers. Even more markedly, the populations of Ontario and British Columbia represented 37.7% and 13.2% respectively of the total Canadian population, while Ontario represented 44.4% of total Canada-U.S. travelers and British Columbia represented 20.8%.

North American transportation in figures provides a comprehensive set of comparable statistical indicators of the use, performance and impact of transportation in North America. It includes over 90 different data tables, supported by figures, maps and extensive technical documentation describing data categories and definitions relating to each country, that is, Canada, Mexico and the United States. The report covers a wide variety of transportation subjects across the three countries: including transportation and the economy; safety; merchandise trade; freight activity; passenger travel; infrastructure; and transportation energy and environment.

Samples from hidden and hard-to-access human populations are often obtained by procedures in which social links are followed from one respondent to another. Inference from the sample to the larger population of interest can be affected by the link-tracing design and the type of data it produces. The population with its social network structure can be modeled as a stochastic graph with a joint distribution of node values representing characteristics of individuals and arc indicators representing social relationships between individuals.

To better understand the impact of imposing a restricted region on calibration weights, the author reviews the latter's aymptotic behaviour. Necessary and sufficient conditions are provided for the existence of a solution to the calibration equation with weights within given intervals.

For surveys which involve more than one stage of data collection, one method recommended for adjusting weights for nonresponse (after the first stage of data collection) entails utilizing auxiliary variables (from previous stages of data collection) which are identified as predictors of nonresponse.

Survey statisticians frequently use superpopulation linear regression models. The Gauss-Markov theorem, assuming fixed regressors or conditioning on observed values of regressors, asserts that the standard estimators of regression coefficients are best linear unbiased.

This report examines the factors contributing to the rapid growth of a small number of biotechnology firms in Canada.

This is the second release of preliminary data in advance of the annual publication, scheduled for completion in October of this year. It covers facilities-based carriers (wireline, wireless and satellite) as well as resellers.

This Juristat from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics analyzes recent trends in the sentencing of young offenders, those aged 12 to 17, who have been convicted of a federal offence. The analysis is based on data released earlier in May of this year.

It provides information on the characteristics of young offenders sentenced in court, the nature of dispositions, trends in sentencing, and comparisons of young offenders on the basis of age, sex, nature of charge, number of charges and prior convictions. In addition, this report compares the sentencing of adult and young offenders.

The purpose of this Juristat is to provide information on the administration of alternative measures in Canada, and its relative success in diverting individuals out of the court system. The report focuses on alternative measures for youth, but also includes a short section presenting data on adult alternative measures.

The incomes of culture workers have long been an issue of concern to culture organizations and lobby groups. Using the 1997 Census, we can look at the average earnings of some 500 different occupations including some selected culture occupations.

When productivity increases in a sector, does it mean employment growth? This article explores the question and introduces a new concept: multifactor productivity.

Often, the same information is gathered almost simultaneously for several different surveys. In France, this practice is institutionalized for household surveys that have a common set of demographic variables, i.e., employment, residence and income. These variables are important co-factors for the variables of interest in each survey, and if used carefully, can reinforce the estimates derived from each survey. Techniques for calibrating uncertain data can apply naturally in this context. This involves finding the best unbiased estimator in common variables and calibrating each survey based on that estimator. The estimator thus obtained in each survey is always a linear estimator, the weightings of which can be easily explained and the variance can be obtained with no new problems, as can the variance estimate. To supplement the list of regression estimators, this technique can also be seen as a ridge-regression estimator, or as a Bayesian-regression estimator.

The U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey uses two instruments, a diary and an in-person interview, to collect data on many categories of consumer expenditures. Consequently, it is important to use these data efficiently to estimate mean expenditures and related parameters. Three options are: (1) use only data from the diary source; (2) Use only data from the interview source; and (3) use generalized least squares, or related methods, to combine the diary and interview data. Historically, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has focused on options (1) and (2) for estimation at the five or six-digit Universal Classification Code level. Evaluation and possible implementation of option (3) depends on several factors, including possible measurement biases in the diary and interview data; the empirical magnitude of these biases, relative to the standard errors of customary mean estimators; and the degree of homogeneity of these biases across strata and periods. This paper reviews some issues related to options (1) through (3); describes a relatively simple generalized least squares method for implementation of option (3); and discussed the need for diagnostics to evaluate the feasibility and relative efficiency of the generalized least squares method.

The geographical and temporal relationship between outdoor air pollution and asthma was examined by linking together data from multiple sources. These included the administrative records of 59 general practices widely dispersed across England and Wales for half a million patients and all their consultations for asthma, supplemented by a socio-economic interview survey. Postcode enabled linkage with: (i) computed local road density; (ii) emission estimates of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxides, (iii) measured/interpolated concentration of black smoke, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants at practice level. Parallel Poisson time series analysis took into account between-practice variations to examine daily correlations in practices close to air quality monitoring stations. Preliminary analyses show small and generally non-significant geographical associations between consultation rates and pollution markers. The methodological issues relevant to combining such data, and the interpretation of these results will be discussed.

The artificial sample was generated in two steps. The first step, based on a master panel, was a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) carried out on basic variables. Then, "dummy" individuals were generated randomly using the distribution of each "significant" factor in the analysis. Finally, for each individual, a value was generated for each basic variable most closely linked to one of the previous factors. This method ensured that sets of variables were drawn independently. The second step consisted in grafting some other data bases, based on certain property requirements. A variable was generated to be added on the basis of its estimated distribution, using a generalized linear model for common variables and those already added. The same procedure was then used to graft the other samples. This method was applied to the generation of an artificial sample taken from two surveys. The artificial sample that was generated was validated using sample comparison testing. The results were positive, demonstrating the feasibility of this method.

Electricity rates that vary by time-of-day have the potential to significantly increase economic efficiency in the energy market. A number of utilities have undertaken economic studies of time-of-use rates schemes for their residential customers. This paper uses meta-analysis to examine the impact of time-of-use rates on electricity demand pooling the results of thirty-eight separate programs. There are four key findings. First, very large peak to off-peak price ratios are needed to significantly affect peak demand. Second, summer peak rates are relatively effective compared to winter peak rates. Third, permanent time-or-use rates are relatively effective compared to experimental ones. Fourth, demand charges rival ordinary time-of-use rates in terms of impact.

We use data on 14 populations of coho salmon to estimate critical parameters that are vital for management of fish populations. Parameter estimates from individual data sets are inefficient and can be highly biased, and we investigate methods to overcome these problems. Combination of data sets using nonlinear mixed effects models provides more useful results, however questions of influence and robustness are raised. For comparison, robust estimates are obtained. Model-robustness is also explored using a family of alternative functional forms. Our results allow ready calculation of the limits of exploitation and may help to prevent extinction of fish stocks. Similar methods can be applied in other contexts where parameter estimation is part of a larger decision-making process.

This user's guide provides a detailed description of the CD-ROM Income trends in Canada (13F0022XCB). It also provides a glossary, a description of the major concepts as well as an overview of the data source, the Survey of Consumer Finances.

This paper outlines the process of delineating the agricultural land base (ecumene) in Canada based on data from the 1991 Census of Agriculture.

This paper reconstructs the development and evolution of the Canadian agricultural statistical system. It describes the expanding and increasingly important role of administrative data, which is integrated into survey and census information in order to complement, supplement or replace survey information or to assist with frame maintenance.

This paper describes the experiences, the issues and the expectations of the many different players involved in the implementation of document imaging for the Canadian Census of Agriculture.