If what you are looking for is agricultural statistics, Statistics Canada is a wondrous place.  See, Statscan even made a fabulous (if oddly truncated) little video about agricultural statistics.

Statscan can tell you *anything* about agriculture.  Monthly oilseed crushing statistics?  No problem (59,387 tonnes in August, in case you were wondering).  It can tell you on a weekly basis the weight of all eggs laid and processed in Canada (week of August 1st = 2.3 million kilograms); it can even break it down by “frozen” and “liquid”.  Want to know the annual value of ranch-raised pelts in Canada?  Statscan’s got you covered.

But let’s not stop here.  Wondering about barley, flaxseed, and canola deliveries for August, by province?  Check.  National stocks of sweetened concentrated whole milk, going back to 1970? Check (for comparison, GDP data only goes back to 1997).  Average farm prices for potatoes, per hundredweight, back to 1908?  Check.

There is even – and this one is my favourite – an annual Mushroom Growers’ Survey.  (Technically, it’s a census of mushroom growers, – and yes, this means Statscan expends resources to maintain a register of Canadian mushroom growers; let that sink in for a moment.)  From this survey – the instrument is here – one can learn what percentage of mushrooms grown in Canada are of the Shiitake variety, whether said Shiitake mushrooms are grown on logs, in sawdust, or pulp mill waste fibers, and then compare whether the value per employee of mushroom operations is greater or lesser for Shiitake mushrooms than for Agaricus or Oyster mushrooms.

According to Statistics Canada, this is actually worth spending money on.  This stuff matters.

Also according to Statistics Canada: the combined value of agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting is $25 billion.  Or about $10 billion a year less than the country spends on universities alone.  Total value of educational services is $86 billion a year.

And yet, here are a few things Statscan doesn’t know about education in Canada: the number of first-year students in Canada, the number of part-time instructors at Canadian universities, the number of part-time professors at universities, anything at all about college instructors, access rates to post-secondary education by ethnic background or family income, actual drop-out and completion rates in secondary or post-secondary education, the number of new entrants each year to post-secondary education, the rate at which students transfer between universities and colleges, or within universities and colleges, time-to-completion, rates of student loan default, scientific outputs of PSE institutions, average college tuition, absolutely anything at all about private for-profit trainers… do I need to go on?  You can all list your pet peeves here.

Even on topics they do know, they often know them badly, or slowly.  We know about egg hatchings from two months ago, but have no idea about college and university enrolment from fall 2013.  We have statistics on international students, but they do not line up cleanly with statistics from Immigration & Citizenship.  We get totals on student debt at graduation from the National Graduates Survey, but they are self-reports and are invariably published four years after the student graduates.

What does it say about Canada’s relationship to the knowledge economy, when it is official policy to survey Mushroom growers annually, but PSE graduates only every five years?  Who in their right mind thinks this is appropriate in this day and age?

Now, look, I get it: human capital statstics are more complicated than education statistics, and it takes more work, and you have to negotiate with provinces and institutions, and yadda yadda yadda.  Yes.  All true.  But it’s a matter of priorities.  If you actually thought human capital mattered, it would be measured, just as agriculture is.

The fact that this data gap exists is a governmental problem rather than one resulting from Stastcan, specifically.  The agency is hamstrung by its legislation (which mandates a substantial focus on agriculture) and its funding.  Nevertheless, the result is that we have a national statistical system that is perfectly geared to the Edwardian era, but one that is not fit for purpose when it comes to the modern knowledge economy.  Not even close.