Financial Survey of Canadian Water Carriers

Detailed information for 2001

The survey collects financial and operational data from Canadian-domiciled water carriers.

Data release - February 4, 2004

• Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s)
• Description
• Data sources and methodology
• Data accuracy

Description

The survey collects financial and operational data from Canadian-domiciled water carriers. The data are used as input to the Canadian System of National Accounts, by Transport Canada and other federal and provincial government departments, by transportation companies, consulting firms and universities. The information is used for the analysis of transportation activity, for marketing and economic studies, and industry performance measures.

Statistical activity

This statistical activity is part of a set of surveys measuring various aspects of activities related to the movement of people and goods. These surveys are grouped as follows:

Transportation by air includes records related to the movement of aircraft, passengers and cargo by air for both Canadian and foreign air carriers operating in Canada as well as the financial and operating characteristics of Canadian air carriers. These data are produced by the Aviation Statistics Centre.

Transportation by rail includes records relating to rail transportation in Canada, and between the United States and Canada.

Transportation by road includes records relating to all road transport in Canada. In addition to surveying carriers and owners of registered motor vehicles, certain programs rely on aggregation of provincial and territorial administrative records.

Reference period: Calendar year

Collection period: third quarter

Subjects

• Transportation
• Transportation by water

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The target population includes all companies domiciled in Canada whose principal activity is marine transport as defined in sub-sector 483 of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), with reported operating revenues or expenses of $500,000 or more. This population includes for-hire, government and own account carriers. Their vessels may be registered in Canada or abroad and their activities may or may not take place in Canadian ports. Excluded from the target population are companies that operate private pleasure craft, fishing boats, defence vessels, tour boats and bareboat charters.

Instrument design

The current questionnaire was developed in 1995 as a modification of an existing questionnaire. Changes were made based on consultations with users. The revised questionnaire was tested through simulation interviews with respondents.

Sampling

This survey is a census with a cross-sectional design.

Data sources

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents, extracted from administrative files and derived from other Statistics Canada surveys and/or other sources.

Each year, a mail census is undertaken by Transportation Division of all for-hire carriers, private and government carriers who reported operating revenues or expenses of $500,000 and more in the previous year. A follow-up phone call is made to the largest respondents if questionnaires are not received. Data are extracted and modelled from corporate tax data. Data from survey no. 2503, Corporations Return Act, are also used as source data.

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .

Error detection

The answers on filed documents are compared with the responses of the previous year for consistency. The data are also validated according to explicit clerical procedures. A series of computerized edits are performed to check the addition and subtraction of completed fields as well as the relationships between selected fields. Invalid records are rejected for manual correction. Reports or missing values in a report are estimated only if all efforts to obtain the required actual figures have failed.

Imputation

Manual imputation is used based on corporate tax data and historical information.

Since some units were missing the tax data necessary to include them in the model, an inflation index ratio was applied to compensate. This inflation index ratio not only inflated the estimate to apply to the entire population, but also had the additional property of calibrating the total estimate to the 2001 published estimate.

Estimation

This methodological step does not apply to this survey.

Quality evaluation

Survey results were analyzed at both the micro and macro level. At the micro level, checks were performed on the data to verify internal consistency and identify extreme values. At the macro level, the data were subjected to a detailed quality review process, including comparing with the annual reports published by the companies. Material errors were thereby identified and corrected.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential.

If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data. Data for a specific industry or variable may be suppressed (along with that of a second industry or variable) if the number of enterprises in the population is too low.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

Annual estimates are provided for the reference year. The data for the previous reference year are revised if necessary. As this is an annual program, seasonal adjustments are not applicable.

Data accuracy

Although not all carriers engaged in water transportation are included in this report, coverage is considered representative of the activity. However, before any inferences can be drawn from the data, the following general and specific limitations should be noted. There are four potential sources of errors or distortions which may affect the quality of the survey data and which survey and quality control procedures attempt to minimize. Reporting errors where a respondent may misinterpret a question and not complete it or may include the wrong categories of data in a particular response to a question. Editing errors where an invalid data is not caught by manual and computer edits and may have been used in tabulations. Calculation distortions where conversion factors and other calculations may introduce minor distortions in data. Finally, there are estimation distortions when a report or a particular field on a report may have had to be estimated.