Industry Committee on Aug. 27th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Okay.

Go ahead, Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Of course, food is probably an important issue for people dealing with poverty and it's not a mandatory question. I find it kind of interesting that food and transportation are not mandatory questions, but shelter and water are.

I want to continue with you, Mr. Ornstein. You talk about poverty, and I think we're all concerned about poverty. One of the things that has been expressed is that one of the most likely groups not to answer a voluntary survey—and it would extend to a mandatory census—would be poorer Canadians.

Let's take as an example a single mother with three kids who's living around the poverty line or below the poverty line. They have someone knock on their door and ask them how much time they spent doing housework last week. If they don't want to answer that question, for whatever reason, do you think it's appropriate to threaten them with a $500 fine?

[Michael Ornstein]

No, I don't think it's appropriate to threaten them with a $500 fine.

I don't think that's what the issue is at all. I think what you're doing is taking absolutely untypical, single complaints and trying to deal with policy in this way. I think your entire approach to this is completely inappropriate.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

So if she says, “You know what? I don't want to tell you how much time I spent with my kids last week,” if she just doesn't want to answer for whatever reason, should she be fined $500?

[Michael Ornstein]

No.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Okay.

If a new Canadian doesn't want to answer a question about his or her religion, doesn't want to answer that question for whatever reason, should that individual be fined $500?

[Michael Ornstein]

I don't think the issue has to do with fines.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

But that's what the law says. That's what you're here to testify against, the change we're making. So I just want to clarify.

[Michael Ornstein]

So do you think the law should be changed?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It's their law.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Order. Mr. Lake has the floor.

Mr. Lake, will you finish your intervention and then we'll hear from the witness? Go ahead, Mr. Lake.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It's your law.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

The changes we're making take away the fines.

So again, do you believe that a new Canadian who doesn't want to tell the government what his or her religion is should be threatened with a fine of $500?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

Mr. Ornstein, go ahead. You have the floor.

[Michael Ornstein]

I think the answer is “no”.

In Australia, for example, there's a small fine for not voting. Voting is a mandatory thing in Australia. So I think small fines are appropriate. But the thing is that if you're trying to understand the character of the population, if you're trying to have evidence-based policy, you need the information that's in the long-form census, and I sense that you're just not addressing that at all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lake and Mr. Ornstein.

Mr. McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair; and thank you to the witnesses for being here.

Just to provide a little bit of perspective, I find it quite astounding that, in the year 2010, here we are debating the triumph of ignorance over knowledge, but I guess that's where we are. I'd like to suggest that this is not just an academic, esoteric issue, but an issue affecting real people in real ways. I'd like to give two example of that and then ask the panel—perhaps Mr. McKinnon and Mr. Turk—whether they have other examples.

The first example is a friend of mine whose name is John Richards. He is a professor at Simon Fraser University who has been studying aboriginal issues, particularly education, for about five years. He told me that, if we didn't have the long-form census, we wouldn't even know how many aboriginals there were, let alone their situation vis-à-vis health and education. Since aboriginals are one of poorest groups of Canadians, I think that is important for good policy and that's a practical case.

The second example is my riding. Markham is hugely multicultural. About 40% of the people are Chinese. Maybe 15% or 20% are South Asian. There are many, many new Canadians. I think the new Canadians would also be under-represented, partly for linguistic reasons, in filling out a voluntary census. So they would be poorly served for the kinds of services, language training and other things, that new Canadians need when they come to Canada.

Those are two concrete examples of how real people, often disadvantaged people, would be negatively impacted.

Perhaps I could start with Mr. Turk. Can you give us other examples of that nature? I think it's important that we bring this down to reality so that people can understand why we're talking about this esoteric issue at such length.

[James L. Turk]

Thank you for your question.

The question cuts to the heart of the matter. While there is all this rhetoric about fines and everything, the real issue is, how do we best serve Canadians? What you're debating here comes down to very real penalties for Canadians.

Before we came in, my colleague, Mike Ornstein, and I were talking about this. He had some wonderful examples. I'll actually defer to him to share, rather than my repeating some of the ones he shared with me just before the meeting.

[Michael Ornstein]

I have just two very brief examples.

I did some research for the Portuguese Canadian National Congress and spoke to them about the educational attainment of Portuguese Canadians. Portuguese Canadians are actually extraordinary. In a certain way, they've been very successful. They have relatively high incomes. But compared to other European groups, in fact compared to all ethno-racial groups, they have very low levels of education. This is a huge concern for the Portuguese community.

You can understand the logic of it. Many of them go into the construction industry. A lot of boys don't finish high school. But it is a huge concern for the community. So part of this research has to do with outreach in the schools. University attendance is one thing, but a big issue for them is completion of high school, especially by boys.

There are just an extraordinary number of examples like this. I've done similar research for African Canadian groups in Toronto.

As one final example, for the Law Society of Upper Canada I have used the census to look at the proportion of women, first nations people, and visible minorities who are lawyers in Ontario. Not only can you look at the numbers, because there are statistics on income and a variety of other things, but you can look at income differentials over time.

The whole thing about the census is that it's an extraordinarily multi-purpose instrument. There are all kinds of uses of the census that were never envisaged when the census was planned.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McKinnon, and then Mr. Cappe.

[Ian McKinnon]

Let me give you a simple example. You raised the issue of aboriginals. One of the strengths of the census is that you can get micro area data. You get very small, local data. It's not just to serve individuals or to generate demand. It can also serve to help keep our institutions and service providers responsive.

In British Columbia, we have a lot of data looking at student outcomes. One of the keys for aboriginal success in a life trajectory is to do well in school. If you just look at school-level data and ask who's performing well, who's graduating a lot of kids, who's sending them to university, you find, typically, upper-middle-class schools in affluent suburbs. But children don't have the option of being born only to parents where both parents have a university education.

There was a recent study done by the C.D. Howe Institute that looked at educational outcomes and took into account the neighbourhood characteristics, the micro characteristics from the census. Low and behold, all of a sudden it's not just West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver, the affluent suburbs of Victoria, and one or two high schools around the city but real progress being made in Prince Rupert by two schools with lots of aboriginal kids. So that tells us, “Let's go and see what they're doing there, because those institutions are working and we can learn from that to help other aboriginal children province-wide”. We're holding the institutions accountable by that small-area census data.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. McKinnon.

Lastly, Mr. Cappe.

[Mel Cappe]

I have three points to make.

In answer to Mr. Lake's question earlier, Mr. Turk and Mr. Ornstein were afraid to say yes. I'm not. I think it is appropriate that they be threatened with fines in order to protect the integrity of the institution of StatsCan and the data.

In answer to Mr. McCallum's point, I don't believe we can reverse the enlightenment.

Of the two examples I would use, one is that the targeting of pandemic plans by the City of Toronto's public health authority was based on census track data to determine vulnerable populations and therefore protect the rich, because the poor might actually get H1N1. The other example is that the social determinants of health by census track, in general, allow us to measure how things develop, and I think that's very important.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Cappe and Mr. McCallum.

Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair; and thank you all for attending.

Mr. McCallum had an interesting question. He mentioned something about the real people. It's interesting that he didn't ask the two real people. I'm not suggesting that any of you are not real people, but the people he was talking about are sitting right here at the table, so I'm going to give them an opportunity to respond to some of the questions he asked.

I think it's really important to once again set out clearly that what we're talking about is voluntary or mandatory. I really believe that if we give the real people a chance, two things are going to happen.

Number one, patriotic Canadians will respond wholeheartedly. If we tell people, “Folks, we need this information and we'd really like to have this information; we want you to contribute to this as well,” I really think, be they marginalized, rich, poor, educated, or uneducated, we'll get a good cross-section.

Number two—and I think this is important—I know my constituents, because I do something called “Coffee and tea with the MP”. I get right down with my constituents. I buy them coffee. This is a little gadget I get. This was developed over a number of years. We have some pretty interesting conversations. It took a long time, but they trust me and I trust them. I think once we formulate this new pattern they're going to come to me and say, “Dave, why are they asking this?”, “Why are they asking that?”, “Why do we have to...?”, and that's really healthy. I think we're going to engage them.

Mr. Henderson, you mentioned that you had to spend some money. So I'm going to give some time to both you and Mr. Lam, the people who are really affected.

You had to spend some money to fill out your last one, and we heard how busy you were in that season too. But how would you feel if you knew that StatsCan was selling some of the information you sent them?