Annual Survey of Forestry

Summary of changes

Activity on this program started: 1917

Reference period of change - 2003

Instrument design - Beginning with reference year 2003, the short form questionnaire is no longer used and all survey data are collected using one fully detailed questionnaire (long form).

Reference period of change - 2002

Target population - As of reference year 2002, the manufacturing industry classification is based on the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2002.

Reference period of change - 2000

The Annual Survey of Forestry was redesigned for reference year 2000. The redesign led to changes in the survey coverage and questionnaires, as well as in the sampling, imputation and estimation methods. These changes may influence the comparability of the 1999 and 2000 data series in a limited way.

Beginning with reference year 2000, Statistics Canada's Business Register, a central listing of all businesses operating in Canada, has been used to identify in-scope businesses for the forestry survey. In addition, the coverage of the Annual Survey of Forestry was expanded from businesses with logging shipments of greater than or equal to $30,000 to all logging businesses in Canada. Since these changes would have resolved any under-coverage in the logging estimates prior to 2000, they may have partially contributed to the changes observed in principal statistics for logging between 1999 and 2000.

Also, beginning with reference year 2000, data for the Head Offices of manufacturers are no longer included in the survey estimates. This affects the following variables: non-production employees, salaries, total employees, total salaries and wages, cost of materials, supplies and goods for resale, shipments and other revenue, and total value added. In 1999, Head Office activity in logging accounted for less than 1% of the employees of Canadian logging operations; and about 4% of the total shipments and other revenue.