The man who took over as head of Statistics Canada after the former chief quit in a cloud of controversy says a voluntary survey will not yield the information of a mandatory census - but neither will it be a waste of time.

The results of the voluntary National Household Survey, which will arrive in Canadian mailboxes in spring, "will, of course, never be comparable to census data," Wayne Smith said in an internal Statscan publication obtained by The Globe and Mail.

Read the entire Globe and Mail article here.