Now with more sampling error

The Globe gets hold of the internal survey conducted to test how a voluntary census would perform.

Statscan researchers found the voluntary approach produced less accurate results – a problem that was especially significant in small population groups, according to outside statistics advisers who reviewed the report for The Globe ... the real 2006 long-form census found that visible minorities as a share of the population increased by 2.77 percentage points between 2006 and 2001. The simulated voluntary approach would have reported an increase of only 0.74 percentage points.