Bill C-583 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Statistics Act (Chief Statistician)

This enactment amends the Statistics Act to require the Governor in Council to consult with the leader of every recognized party in the House of Commons before appointing the Chief Statistician of Canada and to make that appointment from a list of candidates submitted by a search committee appointed by the Minister designated by the Governor in Council for the purposes of that Act. It also requires the Chief Statistician of Canada to establish and publish guidelines respecting sources of statistical information and its collection, analysis, processing, storage and publication.

Statistics Act

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased today to speak to Bill C-568, An Act to amend the Statistics Act (mandatory long-form census).

I will read the summary of the bill so that the viewing public can understand it:

This enactment amends the Statistics Act to provide that the census of population taken under section 19 of the Act must be taken using a long-form census questionnaire that conforms substantially, in length and substantive scope, to the census starting in 1971 and at intervals thereafter to meet the requirements of that section. This enactment also removes the punishment of imprisonment for a person convicted of the offence of providing false or misleading information.

I congratulate the member, who is a long-standing member of the House, for introducing this bill.

When the government announced its initiative many months ago, I got the impression that most people, even Conservatives that I talked to among members of the public, felt it was the most boneheaded move the government had made since the killing of the prison farms.

Generally speaking, the public settles down based on ideology and their voting patterns. When the government of their choice introduces something, they try to understand what the government is doing. By and large, they find a way to accept, if they are Conservatives, what their government is doing and work out a rationale for it.

However, these are two issues, which I find from talking to Conservatives, that just leave them puzzled. They cannot explain why the government has done it and they do not agree that the prison farms should have been eliminated. They certainly do not agree that the census should be changed.

That aside, many organizations have the same view on this matter. There are business organizations across the country that require the statistics provided by the census in order to conduct proper business operations.

As the Liberal member mentioned previously, in his attempt to find out why the government was doing this, he looked at the cost of it and said that the government is spending $30 million more to get less reliable data. It does not make sense.

Then I looked back to a question that I asked on September 28. We were looking at best practices. I like to talk about best practices. That is the hallmark of Conservatives. Whatever line of business we are talking about, computers, IT issues, it is always best practices and they are lined up with Conservatives.

Well, the best practices here would seem to be the United States. The Conservatives seem to want to follow where the United States is going, and they are always six months or six years behind. I do not know whether the member has checked this out or not, but back in 2003 when George Bush was the president, the Americans tried this experiment. The U.S. Census Bureau conducted an experiment and found that the data was degraded so much that fixing it would be too expensive and it abandoned the idea.

What sort of planning is the government involved in and what sort of planning did it do to develop this approach?

We know what the approach was. It was a knee-jerk ideological approach to the problem. The Conservatives had a preconceived notion. Their Conservative ideology tells them that this census is an irritant to a certain number of their supporters, and they probably heard from a few of them over the years.

I am sure it is the libertarian part of the party that is flexing its muscles at this point. The libertarians have not had a lot of support from the government over the last four or five years as it races to recoup as much of the centre ground from the Liberals that it could get its hands on. Every once in a while the Conservatives throw some red meat at the libertarians in their group.

That is the only reason the Conservatives would have taken this measure. The public does not support what they are doing.

The Joe Clark government seemed to have suicidal tendencies from day one. That was the government that started sending pension cheques to federal prisoners. We have not seen that suicidal tendency in the Conservative Party over the years, but we are certainly seeing it now.

Practically every business organization in the country is opposed to the government's approach on the census. School boards are opposed to the idea. Pretty much each and every province is opposed to the idea. Members over there might be able to tell me that one province is onside with respect to this issue. My home province of Manitoba is not in favour of this approach to the census. If the government is trying to get allies, if it is trying to build support, then it does not make any sense to torch its relationships.

We support this bill because it seeks to reverse the ideologically-based decision of the Conservative government to cancel the long form census. It would remove imprisonment of a person convicted of providing false and misleading information. That is an issue. Nobody has ever spent time in jail for failing to provide information with respect to the census, but the idea that it was possible may have weighed heavily on some people when they were asked to provide information.

While we support the bill, it really does not go far enough. Bill C-583 put forward by our colleague from Windsor West goes one step further. It would enshrine in law the primacy of evidence-based decision making over political manoeuvring of the likes we have seen with the government. We have seen political manoeuvring by the government not only with respect to this issue but with respect to a whole range of other areas. The Conservatives have fired people, sometimes people that they hired, who do not see things their way. They hired the victims' advocate three years ago and when he did not act the way he promised on victims' support, they simply fired him. They will get somebody who sees things their way.

As I have indicated, no Canadian has been imprisoned for failing to fill out the long form census. That would be removed if this bill were to pass. We have to remove political interference in the process. The chief statistician has to be able to do his or her job in an environment free of political meddling by an ideological government, certainly one like the Conservative government which is intent on suppressing evidence and information that contradicts its own narrow agenda.

Imagine the outrage from Canadians and the international community if the finance minister had interfered with the independence of the Governor of the Bank of Canada to set monetary policy. Why should we accept the government's heavy-handedness by interfering with our chief statistician's capacity to do his or her job?

As I have indicated, hundreds of individuals, organizations, businesses, governments from coast to coast, certainly an apolitical group of people have raised alarm bells about the terrible decision to cancel the long form census--

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak about the bill today. Let me say right off the top that the rural parts of this country very much need a long form census. We need to know who lives here. We need to know where they live. We need to ensure that services like health care, education, employment assistance and so on are provided fairly and equally right across this country.

For urban areas of course the long form census is just as important, but I am going to keep my remarks mostly to my riding and to the issues that we face and why the long form census is so important to my part of northern Ontario.

Therefore I am very pleased to speak today on Bill C-568. It is an act to amend the Statistics Act in which we are dealing with the long form census.

The New Democratic Party is generally supportive of the bill because it seeks to reverse the ideologically based decision of the Conservative government to cancel the long form census. The bill also removes the punishment of imprisonment for a person convicted of providing false or misleading information.

While I am supportive of the bill and while my party is supportive of the bill, it is also important to note that I do not think it goes far enough. Bill C-583 introduced by my colleague from Windsor West goes one step further by enshrining into law the primacy of evidence-based decision making over political manoeuvring, the likes of which we have seen with the Conservative government.

To be clear, both elements of Bill C-568 are fully supported. For the record one more time, not a single Canadian has been imprisoned for failing to fill out the long form census. The imprisonment element should be removed right now.

However we need to go further by removing political interference from Statistics Canada's ability to do its job and provide an accurate picture of our country. The Chief Statistician must be able to do his or her job in an environment free of political meddling by an ideological government intent on suppressing evidence and information that contradicts, in this case, the narrow Conservative agenda.

We can just imagine the outrage from the national and international community if the government were to meddle in the independence of the Bank of Canada, for example. It would not be tolerated.

Therefore why should we accept the government's heavy-handedness when it comes to interfering with our Chief Statistician in his or her ability to do the job?

Hundreds of individuals, organizations, businesses and governments coast to coast raised the alarm bells because of the terrible decision to cancel the long form census. Despite the unsubstantiated claims by Conservative MPs about mythical complaints about the intrusiveness of the long form census, we know that the majority of citizens support and understand the need for the long form census.

Losing the long form census will have a detrimental impact on our communities in Thunder Bay—Rainy River. Let us just look at the first nations communities for example. There are 10 first nations in Thunder Bay—Rainy River. While they are connected by the road system, some are very far away from the main road, and it is important to have an accurate picture.

If we do not have a long form census that asks the kinds of questions that it does, we may not know what is going on in these isolated communities.

For example, without a long form census we would not know that the Couchiching First Nation, as of this past September, had 22 students who had graduated from high school but did not have the ability to go on to post-secondary education because the funding was not there.

We would also not know that in that same community last year it sent its very first student to medical school. It had its first PhD. return to the community.

Here we are making advances right across my riding and I would suggest that is duplicated right across the country.

Just when first nations are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, particularly as far as education is concerned, the taps get turned off. Without a long form census, we do not know and we will not know that is happening. It is important for all of our communities to have the input into the long form census to protect them and to let all Canadians know, to give all Canadians a snapshot of what is going on in those communities.

When we see the importance of the long form census, is it any wonder that the government was taken to court on the issue? It seems as if the government is trying everything, making relentless efforts to shut down any source of credible data that provides any sort of objective evidence necessary for developing good public policy.

A short while ago on Parliament Hill, parliamentarians and members of Canada's very professional public service were invited to a special panel discussion on a very timely topic, evidence versus ideology of Canadian public policy. The event was sponsored by the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, the Association of Canadian Financial Officers and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.

The event aimed to launch a public debate regarding the current state and possible future of evidence-based policy making in Canada. There were a number of distinguished speakers on the panel, and the discussion was fascinating because these panellists and participants acknowledged that there has always been a role for ideology in public policy. However, they noted that in the past two years we have seen the emergence of a worrisome pattern.

First, the government gagged public servants and fired others who dared to disagree with it or give it policy recommendations that did not fit into its ideologically driven agenda.

Second, the government cancelled surveys and the long form census to ensure that statisticians, economists, academics and other professionals did not have access to objective data that provided damning evidence of the government's policy failures.

I am just guessing, but I suppose the object is to put it all into the private domain and let private companies do the work of the long form census. They do sometimes. For example earlier this week there was a BDO Dunwoody study about my pension protection bill, Bill C-501. BDO Dunwoody asked CEOs from across Canada what they thought of the bill. More than half of the CEOs who replied said it is a good bill and Parliament should move it ahead. Those are the kinds of things that the government should be finding out about legislation that happens in this place.

I fear that the Conservative government is dragging the country backward, and a clear majority of Canadians are saying, “No, you cannot drag us backward”. A majority of parliamentarians in the House support restoring the long form census, protecting the professional role of Canada's Chief Statistician and removing the threat of imprisonment in the act. Yet the minority continues to thumb its nose at the majority will of Parliament, an insult to democracy, an insult to this place itself.

Bill C-568 is specific to the government's decision to cancel the long form census. I believe the House needs to have a wider debate about the government's treatment of public servants; its setting of public policy based on belief, not public interest; its rejection of evidence-based public policy; its attempt to shut down public access to objective data; and its attempt to stop credible analysis of its failed policies. This will not work. We are on to the Conservatives, and so are Canadians.

I offer my party's support for the bill and urge the House to bring other necessary changes to protect our professional public service from the kind of pervasive political interference by ministers and their political staff. We need to end this trend and we need to do it quickly before we are dragged any—

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-568, An Act to amend the Statistics Act (mandatory long-form census).

The New Democratic Party is supportive of the bill because it seeks to reverse the ideological-based decision of the Conservative government to cancel the long form census. The bill would also removes the punishment of imprisonment for a person convicted of providing false or misleading information.

While we are supportive of this bill, it is important to note that it does not go far enough.

Bill C-583, introduced by my colleague from Windsor West, goes one step further by enshrining into law the primacy of evidence-based decision-making over political maneuvering of the likes we have seen with the government.

To be clear, both elements of Bill C-568 are fully supported. For the record one more time: not a single Canadian has been imprisoned for failing to fill out the long form census. The imprisonment element should be removed right now.

However, we need to go further by removing political interference from Statistics Canada's ability to do its job and provide an accurate picture of our country. The Chief Statistician must be able to do his job in an environment free of political meddling by an ideological government intent on suppressing evidence and information that contradicts its narrow conservative agenda.

We can just imagine the outrage from the national and international community if the finance minister were to interfere with the independence of the Bank of Canada's governor to set monetary policy. Therefore, why should we accept the government's heavy-handedness in interfering with our Chief Statistician's capacity to do his or her job?

Hundreds of individuals, organizations, businesses and governments from coast to coast to coast raised the alarm bells because of the terrible decision to cancel the long form census. Despite the unsubstantiated claims by Conservative MPs about mythical complaints of the intrusiveness of the long form census, we know that the majority of citizens support and understand the need for the long form census.

As a francophone living in a predominantly English-speaking region in northern Ontario, I know that my community's capacity to access necessary federal services and funding for French cultural and educational initiatives is dependent on the availability of credible data on the size of our community in northern Ontario.

Losing the long form census will have a detrimental impact on our community and every other francophone community outside of Quebec.

Is it any wonder the government was taken to court on this issue? Our community is outraged by the government's relentless efforts to shut down any source of credible data that provides objective evidence necessary for developing good public policy.

Last night, right here on Parliament Hill, parliamentarians and members of Canada's very professional public service were invited to a special panel discussion on a timely topic: evidence versus ideology of Canadian public policy. This event was sponsored by the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, the Association of Canadian Financial Officers and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.

The event aimed to launch a public debate regarding the current state and possible future of evidence-based policy making in Canada. A panel discussion featured three distinguished speakers: Dan Gardner, Ottawa Citizen columnist and author; Lawrence Martin, The Globe and Mail columnist and author; and Armine Yalnizyan, an economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The discussion was fascinating because panellists and participants acknowledged that there has always been a role for ideology in public policy. However, they noted that in the past two years we have seen the emergence of a worrisome pattern.

First, the government gagged public servants and fired others who dared to disagree with it or gave it policy recommendations that did not fit into its ideologically driven agenda.

Second, the government has cancelled surveys and the long form census to ensure statisticians, economists, academics and other professionals did not have access to objective data that provided damning evidence of the Conservative government's policy failures.

The Conservatives are dragging this country backward with their ideological agenda even though a clear majority of Canadians are saying no. The majority of parliamentarians in this House support restoring the long form census, protecting the professional role of Canada's Chief Statistician and removing the threat of imprisonment from the act. Yet, the minority government continues to thumb its nose at the majority will of Parliament. What an insult to this historic institution. What an insult to democracy itself.

Bill C-568 is specific to the government's decision to cancel the long form census.

I believe this House needs to have a wider debate about the government's treatment of public servants. It is setting a public policy based on belief, not public interest; its rejection of evidence-based public policy; its attempt to shut down public access to objective data; and its attempt to stop credible analysis of its failed policies.

This will not work. We are on to the Conservatives and Canadians are on to them. When the next election is called, the Conservatives can be sure that we will remind them of every bad decision they have made.

This is unsubstantiated, but I have been told that the government tried to cancel the long form census when the outgoing Minister of the Environment was the industry minister, but he said no to the PMO. Unfortunately, the current Minister of Industry did not have that fortitude when the PMO came calling again demanding the cancellation of the long form census. There he was this past summer having to make a terrible decision, but he tried to blame the professional public servants of Statistics Canada.

The government keeps saying that the buck stops with the ministers, except, of course, when they make a bad decision, and then it wants to blame the public servants because it cannot defend itself.

This reminds me of when the current President of the Treasury Board was the Sea-Doo leader of the Canadian Alliance and did not know in which direction the Niagara River flowed. He blamed his staff. For the record, it flows north. The Conservatives have been blaming everybody but themselves ever since. It is a shame.

I offer my party's support for this bill and urge the House to bring other necessary changes to protect our professional public service from the kind of pervasive political interference by ministers and their political staff who have been known to interfere in every aspect of departmental decision-making, even stopping the flow of information through the Access to Information Act. We need to end this trend and we need to do it quickly before the Conservatives drag us decades backward.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-583, An Act to amend the Statistics Act (Chief Statistician).

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and an honour to present this act, an act to amend the Statistics Act. This would take the politics out of interfering with the chief statistician.

As members know, there has been a great controversy in Canada with regard to the census. This bill would actually provide greater scrutiny to a process to actually have a chief statistician. This bill, in particular, would require a committee of the Privy Council, the Chief Statistician of Canada, the Bank of Canada and the National Statistics Council to come together to select a chief statistician.

Second, once the chief statistician is selected, he or she will be required to do regular postings of information related to the survey and how it is used. This would restore the science behind the census and would take the politics out of it. That is a good thing for Canadians, I believe, because they believe in their census and they want to ensure that the science is what stands for the census, not ideology or other matters.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)