Opinion: Religion needs to be on Canada's census

Opinion by Joseph Wiebe • Tuesday

On Oct. 26, Statistics Canada released another set of data from the 2021 census which included information on immigration, ethnocultural and religious diversity, and migration. Many have been eagerly awaiting this release, especially those working in the field of religion because the question of religious identity is still only asked every decade in Canada.


University of Alberta students and staff walk through the HUB building, in Edmonton Wednesday Feb. 8, 2017. New census data shows Edmonton among Canada's fastest-growing cities.© Provided by Edmonton Journal

Not only has the available data been outdated by 10 years, some Canadians forget that the 2011 census was erroneously made voluntary under the Harper government.

The skewing of the picture that resulted from having only 68.6 per cent of Canadians turning in the long-form National Household Survey that year is well-documented (and lamented) by policymakers in labour, health, and other fields where a clear data picture is crucial. The choice to go voluntary by Harper’s government led to the resignation of then-head of Stats Canada, Munir Sheikh , who emphasized that the voluntary survey could never replace a mandatory one.

While the move away from compulsory data collection on the census was reversed by the Trudeau government in 2015, the 2011 issue has continued to be a burden for scholars of religion and social policy-makers. A secondary policy of Statistics Canada is to only ask about religious identity every decade, leading to long gaps between particular demographic questions; and this has huge implications on both our shared society and how we understand it.

We currently live in a world where religion and its intersections with public life dominate headlines and have a huge impact on peoples’ lives. In Canada, we have pressing matters of religious freedom like Bill 21 in Quebec, immigration and migrant identities on the topic of integration, and the problems of religious discrimination, hatred, and even violence against religious minorities.

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Let’s not forget that the murder of the Afzaal family in London, Ont., was merely 18 months ago. As political rhetoric here and with our neighbours becomes increasingly divided, oftentimes, claims of racial and religious superiority are used to justify discriminatory rhetoric and policies. Religious data helps us better understand the diversity in Canada and to counter narratives of homogeneity in populist discourses.

And the stats show a telling picture : the majority of Canada’s population remains Christian; however, significant shifts have also occurred. Not only is the Christian share of Canada decreasing, it’s not being lost to the groups that hate-mongers would normally target as the reason.

It is true that Muslim populations in Canada have more than doubled since 2001 (up to 4.9 per cent from 2.0), along with a similar doubling among Hindus and Sikhs; however, in the past 20 years alone, the proportion of the population claiming no religious affiliation has more than doubled and now encompasses one in three Canadians. And immigrants aren’t the cause of this shift either, as some would claim, given that the vast majority of immigrants do have some religion coming into Canada. Rather, it is believed that many who previously reported a religion, now, no longer do.

Indeed, these changes are fascinating and there are numerous other data points for researchers to now explore, with religion as the primary lens. For most scholars of religion, there is little of the artificial separation between religion and public life that so many proclaim, with different religious beliefs and ways of life being carried by the majority of the country’s population, and still others arguing that even secular ways of life still constitute a kind of religiosity with inherited assumptions, myths, and traditions.

The point is that religion has a major impact on society, especially in the diverse religioscape that is Canada and it should not be relegated to the sidelines of our data picture. This is especially true when we consider how central religions often are to the identities of those adhering to them, and how politicians and pundits weaponize that with dire social consequences. Religion is not just “part” of the overall picture; it’s inextricable from the whole of it.

With the release of this critically important data, which does help us understand Canada’s diversity in deeper ways, Stats Canada clearly noted that information on the religion of the population in Canada informs government, organizations, researchers, and other key policymakers for the development of programs, services, laws, religious-building zoning, and other key quality of life factors. With this in mind, our hope is that Canada can include this important question on every census going forward.

Joseph Wiebe is associate professor of Religion and Ecology at the University of Alberta Augustana, and the interim director of the Chester Ronning Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life.