Brian Masse

[Petitions, October 4th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the third petition deals with an issue related to Sri Lanka. The petitioners call for humane and just support for those who have been affected by the war there and to be a country that supports ensuring that human rights abuses are not committed upon them.

[Petitions, October 4th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have four petitions to present.

The first is for the Government of Canada to support a universal declaration on animal welfare. There are hundreds of petitioners from Windsor and Essex County who call for the strengthening of animal welfare rights across the world.

There is a recognition that animals around the world suffer during natural disasters, as well as during cruelty inflicted on them on a regular basis. The petitioners call upon the government to support the universal declaration on animal welfare and that Canada become part of that effort.

The second petition also relates to animal welfare. The petitioners call for strengthening animal transportation regulations. They understand that sometimes animals can be transported for hundreds of kilometres, for hours and even days, sometimes without food, water or basic proper shelter.

Hundreds of petitioners call upon Canada to strengthen this act to ensure there will be proper humane conditions for animals in transport.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, there have been zero people jailed. The reality we are facing, though, is that this is the Conservatives' policy. They have had it for four years, and that is their policy. They can try to make us wear it, but they are just making it up, because it is their policy. It is also their policy to spend $30 million more, and it is their policy to treat farmers differently by having fines and penalties for the mandatory agriculture survey. They have not changed that either.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, my colleague is correct. This Frankenstein approach to the census is clearly a flop.

What is sad about this is that it is really a scientific debate in terms of the response rates. If we have a voluntary response rate, we will have lower numbers. The Conservatives, however, have decided to spend more money to send more people more census forms. This does not even pass the nod test. In a sense, sure they will get more responses, but if they get over-response in areas like Calgary, Vancouver or Montreal versus rural Canada, the data will be skewed. It is important to make reference to the fact that the data will be skewed and therefore useless.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister probably consulted the minister and told him to get rid of it. The minister is probably the only person who was actually consulted in this process, because it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Making this decision during a parliamentary recess, when work was going on behind the scenes when Parliament was in session, undermines a process of democracy that is really important. If the government had this idea, why did it not bring it forward to Parliament and have the evidence come forward and prove its case? There are times in the House when there is common ground, but the government did not do that. It did it over the summer. It tried to sneak it though but it became exposed and that is the end result.

All kinds of groups and organizations were actually there prepping the mandatory census. They were actually consulted under the mandatory census basis. The Conservatives went through the privacy audits of the census, they finished all that work and then later on decided to change it to a national survey. It makes no sense and consequently it will cost $30 million more for this plan.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this issue. I will be sharing my time with the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River.

This issue should not even be in front of us here in Parliament as we are consumed with so many other issues relating to the economy, health, the environment and global warming. We have a situation where we are dealing with an issue that is based on science in terms of data accumulation, but that has met an ideological front, being the Conservative Party of Canada and a minister who want to dismantle it. I honestly believe this is a short part of a longer game to eliminate discourse in this country and to make further cuts to individuals, organizations and groups that sometimes are on the fringe of society and need support. This serves the government's ideological agenda quite significantly, otherwise there would no reason to discuss it.

The first thing I want to touch on is the ludicrous arguments by the minister. It was interesting to watch him again in the House of Commons this morning. It is almost embarrassing. It is embarrassing because he gets up and talks about how the opposition wants to put people in jail and that government agents go to people's doors and infringe on their privacy. He uses language that is not becoming, I believe, of minister and is not defensible when we look at the actual facts.

The first fact is that the government's policy is to keep a policy it has had for four years, which is that if people do not finish their census or they do not fill out the form there is jail time. There is no way it can get around that. It has had this policy in place for four years, and had knowledge of it, and now throws it back on opposition members. When we looked at this policy, we said that it did not make any sense, that it did not seem fair, that we did not care to have it and that we did not want it either. We know that it was not even being used. We have not dragged people out of their homes, arrested them and put them behind bars, but that is the minister's policy.

For four years, the current government has known about that. It has had to plan the census. It has had to plan what it would do with it and how it would roll it out, and the government has maintained that. It is nothing more than a cheap game at the end of the day to try to fear monger.

The government tried earlier in the campaign to end the mandatory census when it talked about personal privacy. All of a sudden, there was a huge privacy concern that the minister raised originally. I picked up the phone and called the Privacy Commission to ask if it had concerns about the census. I found out that very few Canadians, in over 10 years, or something like that, had actually even called in to register a complaint, and then it worked on those complaints.

What I also learned in that conversation was that the census had already gone through a Treasury Board audit for privacy, which is required. So, the census that has been compiled, that has been written and that we have already spent money on it to make it ready to go, has gone through an internal privacy audit here in the House of Commons.

It also went through a privacy audit through the Privacy Commissioner. The Privacy Commissioner had already vetted the questions that would be on the census. In fact, the Privacy Commission described the relationship with Statistics Canada as being excellent and, in fact, ongoing. They worked together hand-in-hand to ensure they would get good quality data, that Canadians would be protected in terms of their privacy and that that they would eliminate these issues even before they came to the forefront.

The minister had to drop that argument but picked up the mantle of “we're going to put people in jail”.

During question period, which I have been listening to since the discussions began, for the minister to continue to talk about throwing people in jail and how it is wrong, is embarrassing because we know that is not happening. We know that is his policy that he never changed and we know Canadians are not buying that hyperbole.

What Canadians want to know is why the government wants to spend more money, advertise more and print more to do a census that would be voluntary, that would achieve limited results, that would throw away all the comparable data that we did in the past because we would not be able to compare them, and that has met universal opposition from business organizations to small community groups, even the remotest communities and aboriginal communities? They all recognize that the census in its current state is a much better option than what the minister and the Conservative Party are proposing.

The House of Commons is supposed to be a place where we can work together. What we learned from the minister's testimony this summer when we were called back to the committee was that on June 17 an order in council was made to make the mandatory census into a national household survey, similar to a bad experiment that was done in the United States but in reverse.

When I was at the Canada-U.S. Parliamentary Association meeting in Louisville this summer, Congress members, senators and census people from all across the United States were watching what Canada was doing and asking why we were doing it. They said that they had already gone there and that they had to reverse themselves because it had caused them all kinds of problems. They were mystified as to what was taking place in Canada.

At committee on June 17 we learned that, while the minister was in the House of Commons, he was already scheming to change the census without telling anybody else. The industry committee has a history of working fairly well together with members and try to be non-partisan. Normally, we would study an issue, call in some experts, examine the issue and then table some recommendations back to the House. The minister harboured that.

On June 26 the Canada Gazette issued the change but it was not until July 1 or 5 that the minister made his first public comments on the issue. As a result of those comments, on July 21, Munir Sheikh, the chief statistician of Canada, resigned because of what the minister said in public. It was a pretty dramatic departure.

In that context, the supposedly fiscal Conservatives, who claim to be good with people's money, ended up spending more. The industry committee had to be recalled, which resulted in more money and more time being spent, not to mention more waste. We could have met during the last session of Parliament and it would have been a more co-operative environment. The Conservatives refused to give agreement to scheduling, so one meeting was a complete waste of time and it cost thousands of dollars.

We are supposed to be protecting the pocketbooks of Canadians right now but because of the Conservatives' ideology and headstrong position, they ended up costing Canadians more money. I will repeat that again. To do the census the way the Conservatives want to do it will cost Canadians at least $30 million more. On top of that, businesses, researchers, churches and other types of religious organizations, indigenous populations, scientists, a whole series of groups and organizations that are the customers that buy the census data to the tune of millions of dollars, are telling us that this will ruin the census.

The response rate to the census is around 95%. The census acts as a scientific backstop to other types of surveys and data.

I have a letter written by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada to the minister. This group was consulted about the census in general. It says in the letter, “At no time was there any indication that the long form might be eliminated”. This group is opposed to this and has offered other suggestions to help out. However, the minister has refused.

Canadians have a choice in this: pay more money for the Conservative agenda or save more money and have less hassle by keeping the census the way it is, protect the scientific data that is necessary for a civilized society and ensure we will be able to use all the past investments Canadians have actually put into by completing past censuses. That is what we need to do.

[Business of Supply, September 28th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the minister received a series of correspondence in his office when he changed the policy. There were 3,695 individuals and organizations who contacted his office. Of those, 3,456 were opposed to the Conservative idea of spending more money on the census and having less quality data, and 239 supported the minister.

I would like to ask my colleague why, if that is the party that is supposed to be listening to its constituents, the minister is being hypocritical. He is supposed to be listening to his constituents on issues, but on this issue we see a level of response that is clearly in favour of keeping the status quo as opposed to spending more.

To finish, 84.5% of that correspondence was from individuals, not from special interest groups.

[Committees of the House, September 24th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, when we come to this chamber, we bring different skills that help us in certain files. The hon. member's past has helped on this one and gives some credibility to some of the arguments that have been made. During the member's debate, once again, the minister was heckling and yelling, asking why we wanted to put people in jail. That is an absurd response to the situation.

First, it is the government's policy, and it has had it since it took office in 2004. The government is not changing that with regard to other types of surveys, such as for agriculture. It is something it could have done a long time ago. It is not the member's fault.

He rattled off a series of good examples of different organizations that were supporting our position.

Also, 3,695 responses were received by the minister about his plan. Of that, 3,456 opposed the minister's plan, and 90% of them were ordinary Canadians. I would like the member's thoughts on that.

[Committees of the House, September 24th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question is critical and brings out another angle of the debate that is important to note, especially when it comes to aboriginal populations, Métis and others.

When we do scientific research on those groups and populations, other surveys and measurements are used, but to reinforce them to be more scientific, especially ones that are voluntary if they are research projects and so forth, they are compared to the non-voluntary census itself to make that data more significant, powerful and accurate.

The risk that we are taking is not only to lose the census data regarding the volatility that will now come forth, but we are also risking all the other surveys and measurement tools that we are looking at through social programs, economic issues, environmental planning, civic planning, and all those other elements out there.

That is one of the reasons the business sector is so concerned about this. When it produces those elements, that is what the backstop is. The backstop is the mandatory Canadian census form which produces good data for business and social planning by incorporating other types of measurements in our society.

[Committees of the House, September 24th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is an important one especially in aboriginal communities. He is correct. I believe it was the Métis who testified, but they represented a broad band of aboriginal organizations and were very much opposed to changing the census. The honour of the Crown is a good point to bring up and I am glad the member did so because there is a level of respect that we should already have, that is automatic.

The minister knew that he was going to do this several months in advance and had been working on it even when the House of Commons was sitting. He never bothered to actually consult a population that we know historically in Canada has had several challenges. There are several major issues going on with government relations and programs already that need to be there at the table. For them not to be consulted is clearly an insult at best. It is sad that we still have not learned enough to respect those agreements. When it comes to housing, fresh water, a whole series of things are going to be very important in a census, particularly for aboriginal populations.

These are issues where we know there have been tragedies and basically, in my opinion, a disrespect has been paid. How is it that in Canada we still have some of these conditions of squalor on some of our reserves? That is unacceptable. Many of us would like to see that changed and one of the ways to change that is to ensure that the census provides accurate and proper information so that we can advocate for those things. The census is scientific. It is done through a lens of science as opposed to opinion and that is what is critical for this measure.