During the Bureau's history Canada has developed from a country dependent on a staple economy to a mature industrial power poised at the brink of the information era. Information needs have mushroomed in both quantity and complexity; at the same time the technology for gathering, compiling, analysing, and disseminating information has been revolutionized. Worton looks at how Canada's statistical system has coped with these tremendous changes and outlines some notable Canadian contributions to the science and production of statistics.

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"A very good piece of work. The story of the Bureau interacts with the larger tales of economic, social, demographic, technological, political, and public administration life of Canada over a century and a half, and Worton illustrates some of the fundamental continuities in the development of statistical systems and institutions. A strong feature of the book is the blending of the intellectual and institutional stories of the statistics with human stories of leading players such as Coats, Cudmore, Marshall, Duffett, and Goldberg." David W. Slater, former chairman of the Economic Council of Canada and former professor of economics, Queen's University