Industry Committee on Aug. 27th, 2010

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. McKinnon, as you know, the government now intends to make the mandatory questionnaire voluntary. It also intends to distribute the questionnaire to only a third of Canadians, who would respond on a voluntary basis. I would like to know what you think about those changes. Do you think that the sampling will be as valid as or less valid than it was previously?

[Ian McKinnon]

If one changes to a voluntary form, given the absence of benchmarks, first, you have no way of confirming the accuracy, and one of the real dilemmas is that if you have bias, sample self-selection bias, increasing the number of people you talk to does nothing to solve those bias problems.

I'll give you a trivial example, having run a survey research company. If I did a national survey of 1,500 people and did it in English only, it would mean that in places such as Chicoutimi or Beauce or Lac Saint-Jean the overwhelming majority of potential respondents could not answer and there would be a significant problem. If I doubled the sample size to 3,000, it would in no way change the bias that existed. Those unilingual francophones would not be included among the respondents and the responses would be highly biased.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. McKinnon.

Mr. Lake.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair; and thank you to the witnesses for coming today.

After listening to Mr. Turk and to Mr. Garneau's questions, I'm thinking a little bit about the difference in points of view on this issue and trying to define what differentiates us. I notice that Mr. Garneau was quoted on 630 CHED yesterday, talking about the government having trouble finding groups that support its point of view, so it's down to inviting individuals. I think that highlights a little bit of the difference in approach.

Certainly on this side we know we represent individuals. I think I represent about 120,000 individuals in my riding and it's important that they have their say. I don't think it's something we refer to as the bottom of the barrel that we're down to inviting individuals. I think they're probably the most important people to have their say on issues such as this. So I guess we would agree to disagree on that.

Mr. Turk, in terms of your list of people who have commented—and you went through quite a list there—I had trouble keeping up because you were talking fairly quickly, but I think one of the reasons you've stated for the census being important was about businesses using education levels and income levels to decide where to set up shop. I would probably agree that it's good information to have. In my previous life, in business, I would have liked that information. So you and I can agree on the value of information when it comes to that.

I think the fundamental question we're trying to answer here is about how a government gathers information. If the question is whether we like information, I think everybody around this table would put up their hand and say, yes, we do. But how does the government gather that information?

When it comes to gathering that information, in terms of the way to gather information to help businesses decide where to set up shop based on income levels and education levels, I would say that while that may be good information, it's inappropriate for a government to threaten its citizens with fines or jail time. I'll even focus on the fines, because it seems there's some agreement on the issue of jail time: It's inappropriate for a government to threaten its citizens with fines to get that information.

Let's just talk about this. So we go to one of our citizens and we tell them that the government wants some information through the census, information about education, income, and how much time they spend with their kids or how much housework or yardwork they do. Let's say, hypothetically, in one of the vulnerable groups that are talked about often because they're the least likely to actually fill out the census and are the most likely to be threatened with these fines, there is a single mother with three kids who doesn't want to tell the government how much time she spends with her kids or how much time she spends doing yardwork. We go to her twice and she respectfully tells us she doesn't want to answer those questions—for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. Then the census official pulls out a total refusal form—I don't know if citizens know this—and fills out a part of the total refusal form where they write down the exact words used by the person who has refused and fill out a section on the description of the person who refused: age, gender, height, weight, other physical details such as facial hair, tattoos, glasses, birthmarks, distinctive clothing, etc.

They fill that out on the total refusal form because someone doesn't want to tell them how much yardwork he or she did last week. Does that seem an acceptable role for government to endorse?

[James L. Turk]

Thank you, Mr. Lake, for your questions.

First of all, your opening comment is that we all like information. Actually, I think you should amend that. We all like valid and reliable information. The issue at point here is whether the information that will come from a voluntary replacement for the long-form census will be valid and reliable. The answer is that it won't.

Secondly, on the question about how to gather and do you make it mandatory for citizens, as I understand it, the position of the Government of Canada is that it's perfectly okay to make the short form mandatory, but not the long form. So presumably the same things to which you're objecting will continue in place, merely for a shorter version of questions.

As well, we require information from citizens, mandatory information about their income, when they fill out their income tax form, and there are very serious penalties in that regard.

The point is that we have a collective responsibility, as well as an individual one, and in order for the needs of all Canadians to be met, there's a certain level of valid and reliable information required, as my colleagues as witness have been giving you examples of. We can give you examples as long as you have time to listen to them, about how it's essential for the federal government, for provincial governments, for municipal governments, for community organizations, and for businesses to have reliable and valid information in order to plan things as mundane as what bus routes are the most suitable to meet the needs of the population or in what kinds of communities should various social programs be located. In the absence of the long-form census, our governments can't provide that.

That's the key issue. Are we going to serve the people of this country, or are we not? Eliminating the long-form census is a disservice to every single Canadian.

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

Okay, I have a couple of thoughts on that.

First of all, in regard to the short form, the government has certainly maintained the mandatory short-form census for all Canadians. I'm glad you made that point, because I think there's some misunderstanding. I've seen headlines about scrapping the census. There has been no scrapping of the census, and it's important that you made that point.

Of course, the government has made a decision that when we're talking about the balance of information and the role of government in collecting information, certainly collecting information about who lives where, which is on the short form, and collecting information about the age distribution of our population, which is on the short form, is important information to gather. In fact, I would argue that most of the examples cited in terms of other levels of government and organizations using census data for their decision-making actually refer to questions that are on the short form and are going to continue to be mandatory for all Canadians to answer.

I want to move, if I could, to Mr. Lam.

You talked a little bit about concerns about the accuracy of the long form. At a previous committee meeting, we had Darrell Bricker here before us, and one of the things he talked about was that when you force people to answer questions they don't want to answer, there are significant concerns about the accuracy of the information you're getting. Perhaps that's where we get, for example, on the religion question in 2001, 21,000 Canadians who said they were Jedi Knights of the Jedi Knight religion. So there may be questions in terms of the type of information they get.

Certainly in my conversations with the individuals who the Liberal Party doesn't want to talk to but certainly we want to talk to, they express the same thing. In fact, I've had several people say, “You know what? I filled it out because it was mandatory. I didn't want to fill it out, but I certainly didn't feel obligated to get into great detail in terms of the answers that I was giving.”

Maybe you could speak to that a little bit, sir, that concern that you brought up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

Very briefly, Mr. Lam.

[Joseph Lam]

Okay.

It's strange, though, that sometimes people, just for the sake of it, fill out the form and put in all kinds of information, but the thing is, how are you going to verify the truthfulness of the information?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lam.

Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.

To start, I think I'd like to follow a little bit along the line of what Mr. Lake was talking about, the veracity of witnesses and their experience.

Mr. Lam, how many times have you actually filled out the census, the long-form census?

[Joseph Lam]

The long form has 40 pages, right?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

How many times have you actually filled it out? Have you actually?

[Joseph Lam]

No.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

You've never filled it out.

[Joseph Lam]

No. Maybe I'm just the lucky one. I didn't receive it.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Okay, so you've never actually gone through the process of filling out a long-form census.

[Joseph Lam]

No, but I've heard people say that there are 40 pages and they just look through it and feel that....

Sometimes I can see their problem, because they don't want to reveal their personal information. If you put them in jail, maybe.... I don't know.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Well, nobody has actually been put in jail. Do you know anybody who has actually been put in jail for not filling out the census?

[Joseph Lam]

Have they had to put people in jail?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

No, it has never happened in Canadian history. It has almost become surreal. It's almost like a Salvador Dali painting in the sense that we actually lock people up for not answering the census. I think that has pretty well proven itself to be beyond the ridiculous.

Mr. Henderson, how many times have you filled out the census?

[James P. Henderson]

The long form, once.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

You mentioned in your testimony that it was burdensome and there was a cost. How much do you think it cost you, financially, to fill out the long-form census?

[James P. Henderson]

In dollar value, it would be hard to say, but we had to involve accountants and it did take a considerable amount of my own personal time to do this.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

So you had to engage an accountant.

[James P. Henderson]

Yes, we did, to get accurate figures.