MNI INTERVIEW 2: StatCan Crowdsourcing Fills Property Data Gap

By Greg Quinn

     OTTAWA (MNI) - Statistics Canada is using crowdsourcing to fill gaps in its

data on residential construction which have made it more difficult for policy

makers to assess whether the real estate market has been in danger of

overheating, drawing on techniques developed from the inclusion of marijuana in

GDP.

     Greg Peterson, assistant chief statistician for economics at the agency,

told MNI it has worked on open source data with community groups and Microsoft

to count the number of urban buildings.

     "This was the type of direction we took with cannabis, this is I think more

broadly where we are going," he said in an interview last week. "Statistics now

is more of a team sport, and the key is in developing those partnerships."

     Vancouver and Toronto housing booms a few years ago exposed data gaps

including condo construction that were not well captured in official figures.

That became an issue as the Bank of Canada said rising household debts shifted

the debate about low interest rates and governments imposed taxes to discourage

speculation from adding to demand tied to population and income growth.

     --BACKCASTING

     Justin Trudeau's Liberal government pushed agencies to produce more real

estate data as lawmakers seek to keep housing affordable and review whether

regulators can make a recent mortgage stress test more flexible. StatsCan has

recently overhauled its housing price index to add more information on condos

and resale prices, and the CMHC housing agency is tracing out more financial

data.

     Peterson told MNI that crowdsourcing of illicit marijuana prices helped

move the agency away from the kind of surveys used since Canada's first census

in 1666.

     Located in one of the first nations to legalize marijuana, StatCan faces

fewer roadmaps to help with "backcasting" illicit drug use into GDP accounts

before legalization. "It's been a very valuable experience in terms of use of

different methods in order to answer a very complex question," he said.

--MNI Ottawa Bureau; +1 613-314-9647; email: greg.quinn@marketnews.com

--MNI London Bureau; +44 203 865 3829; email: jason.webb@marketnews.com

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