Bill C-36 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Statistics Act

This enactment amends the Statistics Act to strengthen the independence of Statistics Canada, including by providing for the appointment of the Chief Statistician to hold office during good behaviour and by assigning to the Chief Statistician the powers related to methods, procedures and operations of Statistics Canada. It also establishes a transparent process to issue directives to the Chief Statistician concerning those methods, procedures and operations or the statistical programs. In addition, it establishes the Canadian Statistics Advisory Council, no longer requires the consent of respondents to transfer their Census information to Library and Archives Canada and repeals imprisonment as a penalty for any offence committed by a respondent. Finally, it amends certain provisions by modernizing the language of the Act to better reflect current methods of collecting statistical information.

Statistics Act

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague brings forward such an important issue at which the industry committee could be looking, the issue of energy prices in Canada as it relates to Canada's competitiveness to attract industries and the concern we see with in the Canadian public.

I hear concerns from people across the country on Canada's ability to keep manufacturing jobs in Canada. Therefore, if we look at electricity and energy as a key input cost to our manufacturing sector, regardless of where they are located, but certainly those in Ontario, especially with what the American government is about to do in reducing regulatory burden and taxation on these types of sectors, why would the industry committee not be looking at things like energy costs in Ontario and coming up with public policy options to perhaps counteract the woefully inept and morally bankrupt Wynne government? We should be looking at how we can help save Ontario from the clutches of Kathleen Wynne. The industry committee could definitely be seized with that.

Beyond that, we also could be looking at the impact on confidence when we have such a detrimental policy that seems like something with which the industry committee could be entirely seized. Yet, we get changing the National Statistics Council from 13 members to 10 as a priority of the current Liberal government.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must concur that the situation in Ontario is beyond conscience in as much as the people of Ontario are being gouged in their energy costs and people are being driven from their homes. That is just not acceptable.

In regard to the bill before us, I have listened carefully, and my question for the member is this. In light of all she has said about the importance of statistics and how they are utilized, do the Conservatives still believe the long-form census should be eliminated, or would they keep it? As well, do they believe that access to Statistics Canada should be unrestricted by fees and copyright constraints?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am a Conservative, so one of my first questions is on the sustainability in cost-of-government programming as it relates to our fiduciary responsibility to the handling of taxpayer dollars.

The question my colleague raises about fees, etc. to obtain Statistics Canada data would be a fantastic study for the industry committee. We could look to see if there are any barriers to access, how it affects jobs and the creation of growth, public policy, the ability of NGOs or average Canadians to access that data, and how that could impact the economy one way or another. What a fantastic study for the industry committee. Yet, the industry committee will be talking about the National Statistics Council and changing it from 13 members to 10 Liberal-appointed members. I would love for my colleague to stand in the industry committee and say something about that.

I am a Conservative, so my first question would be how much it would cost the government, how much revenue would created by those types of fees, and what would be the opportunity cost of removing it. That seems like a perfectly reasonable discussion to have in the industry committee. Yet, we have Bill C-36 as the Liberals' legislative priority.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, before the House rose in December, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development introduced Bill C-36, an act to amend the Statistics Act. This proposes a number of amendments to the Statistics Act that are intended to provide more independence to Statistics Canada and the chief statistician. However, in order for members of the House to properly debate these changes, it is important to first list all of the sections of the act that will be amended or added.

First, these changes will give sole responsibility to the chief statistician to decide, based on his or her professional opinion, how to carry out the methods and procedures of all statistical programs. This includes the collection, compilation, analysis, abstraction, and publication of all statistical information.

This last sentence is extremely important, because it touches on the issue of sampling theory. There is an old saying in computer science, and we all know it, “garbage in, garbage out”. I am happy to say that my understanding of Statistics Canada, and I am old enough to remember when it was called the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, is that it has developed a worldwide reputation for competence. The phrase by Mark Twain certainly does not apply to it and Twain, quite wisely, said there are “ lies, damned lies and statistics”. I think Statistics Canada has proved Mark Twain wrong.

My sampling theory is very important. This is how we get the information we need to largely run society. What we are trying to do is determine the characteristics of a population. The population, one could say, are all of the voters in Canada. That is the population. We would never be able to sample all of the voters in Canada. The essence of statistics is to draw a sample of, in this case, the voters of Canada.

We are all familiar with political polls. The first thing I look at in polls is what the sample size is, what the distribution is across the country, what the distribution is by gender and age, and what the distribution is by education level. Each of those is a parameter. When the parameters change, the results change. In terms of what Statistics Canada does, it is critically important that it gets the sample size and the distribution of the sample correctly. In order to be a good sample, it must be random and independent from all other samples of this population. That is how we get accurate information.

Under this bill, the chief statistician would have full authority over the content within statistical releases and publications issued by Statistics Canada, and how and when this information would be circulated. Furthermore, the chief statistician would be responsible for all operations and staff at Statistics Canada, and would be appointed for a fixed renewable term of five years.

In addition, the bill would establish the Canadian statistics advisory council, which would be comprised of 10 members and would replace the National Statistics Council that has been functioning since the mid-1980s. Why the Liberal government wants to replace the National Statistics Council, a model that has worked for almost 40 years, with a new 10-member Liberal-appointed council is beyond me, but this is in the bill. The new council would advise the chief statistician and minister, whereas the National Statistics Council solely advises the chief statistician. This is obviously a distinction without a difference.

In terms of the sample of the statistical experts in Canada, one would think that a council with more members on it, more representation from across the country, and more representative of disciplines, scientific, technical, and industrial disciplines, would be better in advising the chief statistician. I, for one, will be looking very closely at the qualifications of the new statistics council.

Within its mandate, the Canadian statistics advisory council would focus on the quality of the national statistical system, including the relevance, accuracy, accessibility, and timeliness of the statistical information produced by Statistic Canada. This obviously means that these individuals had better be experts in statistics. Statistics is a very complex field. It is very difficult to generate accurate information without doing exhaustive analyses. This council would also be required to make a public annual report on the state of the statistical system.

I am going to segue into the area of education. I think this is a positive suggestion for the new council and indeed Stats Canada as a whole.

Not every Canadian is fortunate to have been trained or partially trained in statistics and few are actually exposed to the discipline itself, how it creates the information we all need. However, every Canadian is affected by statistical analysis. Whether we vote, or purchase industrial products, or we farm, statistical analysis is extremely important. We often hear poll results that are accurate to 19 times out of 20. Again, there is a very complex theory behind that. Therefore, I would make a recommendation for the new statistics advisory council that it graft on a public education program in statistics, given how vital statistics are to any industrialized country.

I am a very strong supporter of data that is gathered accurately. It is this data and the subsequent analysis that guide much of industrial policy, economic development, and also guide decision-makers as to ways they can make proper decisions for their companies, their constituents, or indeed their country.

As well, Bill C-36 would allow for the transfers of census information from Statistics Canada to Library and Archives Canada after 92 years, without the consent of Canadians. We said that Canadians had to consent to do this. This is a change. Once transferred to Library and Archives Canada, this information would be made available to all Canadians.

Finally, it would repeal imprisonment as a penalty for any offence committed by a respondent. Additionally, it would amend certain sections to make the language more modern and eliminate discrepancies between the English and French versions of the act.

After reading the bill at length, it has become evident that many aspects could be of concern to Canada and will need further discussion. It is our duty as opposition to critique and highlight any issues that we find evident in all legislation put forth by the government. As such, I will shed light on some of the concerns I have regarding Bill C-36.

Our Conservative Party strongly supports the work that Statistics Canada does and the key statistical data it provides. The Conservative Party of Canada is clearly the party of working people and economic development. Much of the economic development in our country is guided by good statistical work, much of that provided by Stats Canada. Indeed, Statistics Canada, as evolved from the former Dominion Bureau of Statistics, has developed a global reputation for competence.

We know how important this information is for governments, public policy-makers, the research and academic communities, the agricultural communities, the fishing community, the industrial community, the energy community, and it is vital to anyone who uses Stats Canada data for any purpose. In other words, they need to know they can trust its accuracy and quality.

However, the privacy of Canadians is most important, and fostering an environment that builds trust between Canadians and Statistics Canada is crucial. The Liberal government must ensure that the right balance is struck between protecting the privacy rights of Canadians while collecting good quality data.

As we saw in the last U.S. election, the issue of the security of electronic information was front and centre. Canadians have to trust, implicitly and explicitly, that the data they provide to Statistics Canada will be kept secure. This is absolutely crucial.

If Canadians do not trust Statistics Canada, they may be tempted to provide the wrong information or segue out of the program as best they can to avoid any hint of their information getting into the wrong hands. The privacy of Canadians has to be a primary objective of Statistics Canada.

In the past, Canadians have expressed concern about the questions asked of them in the census and in surveys conducted by Statistics Canada. They found questions, such as the number of bedrooms in their home, what time of day they leave for work and return, and how long it takes them to get there, to be an intrusion on their privacy.

With the changes the Liberal government has proposed in this bill, the minister would no longer be able to issue directives to the chief statistician on methods, procedures, and operations. This means that the chief statistician would have sole authority to ask any questions he or she deemed fit on a census or survey, including those Canadians found intrusive.

The independence of scientists and technical people is very important, because without that independence, they are not able to conduct the objective research that determines the correct approach on many issues. Having said that, as this is a public agency, I have as a principle, and I think it is a principle for all Conservatives, that at the very end of the chain, there needs to be an elected official at some point. There can be all the safeguards so that the elected official does not interfere with professional and technical projects that are clearly apolitical, although it is very difficult in this day and age to find anything that is apolitical.

To have an unelected staff person, no matter how conscientious, completely out of any chain of command with an elected official would mean that citizens would have no redress if they found a census form to be offensive. They would have no way to talk to an accountable elected official and express their concerns. Obviously, not every citizen gets his or her way when talking to an elected official. However, someone who is elected listens in a different way than someone who is appointed.

Again, if this occurs, this could potentially result in the creation of distrust and cynicism towards Statistics Canada by the public and hinder the quality of data it oversees. Moreover, with the abdication of responsibility by the minister to the chief statistician, who would be responsible for answering to Canadians when they raised concerns regarding the methods used? This is an important question that, quite frankly, seems to me to be the opposite of an open and transparent government.

As well, I would like to touch a bit more on the section of this bill that amends the responsibilities of the chief statistician. The current changes state that he or she will “decide, based strictly on professional statistical standards that he or she considers appropriate, the methods and procedures for carrying out statistical programs regarding the collection, compilation, analysis, abstraction and publication of statistical information that is produced or is to be produced by Statistics Canada”.

One would hope, as well, that there will be an ongoing evolution within Statistics Canada, because statistical methods do change from time to time as new research develops new methods of statistical analysis. A research and development component would be important.

It is our job, as the opposition party, to highlight any implications a bill may have, regardless of intent. Even though it may not be the intent, this bill authorizes Statistics Canada to house all of its data wherever it chooses. If the chief statistician would like to move the private information of Canadians to a third party, he or she would have the ability to do so if this bill becomes law.

Again, this is quite concerning. The security and safety of Canadians and their private information should be the top priority of any government. Any use of a third party to house this data could create security concerns, and again, damage the view Canadians have of Statistics Canada. If they do not have faith in Statistics Canada, as I said earlier, they will be reluctant to provide the information the country needs.

The Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development has also suggested that a Canadian statistics advisory council be created to replace the National Statistics Council. The new council would comprise 10 members. For those who do not know much about the National Statistics Council, it is already in place. According to Statistics Canada, the National Statistics Council advises the chief statistician of Canada on the full range of StatsCan's activities, particularly on overall program priorities. The council was created in 1985 under the Mulroney government and currently has representatives from all 13 provinces and territories. This is very important.

While the new council would provide insight to the chief statistician and the minister, as opposed to only the former, and would produce annual reports on the state of our statistical system, it would not have full representation from across Canada. This could result in one area of the country being favoured over the other, which is not fair to Canadians in those parts of the country.

I am going to talk a little about agriculture. I represent Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, a primarily agricultural constituency. In my time studying statistics, most of our textbooks actually came from agricultural colleges. Agriculture, and agricultural researchers, developed much of statistical theory. In fact, my third year statistical textbook was from Iowa State University and was written by two agricultural professors. They developed techniques like the Latin square and other methods for doing crop research. The research developed by agriculture has been used in all other disciplines that use statistical analysis. If I had my druthers about this particular new body the Liberals are proposing, I would strongly recommend that agriculture have a significant presence on the council, given the history agriculture has had with the development of statistical theory.

There is also fisheries. As a fisheries biologist myself, back in the days when I was doing fisheries research, everything we did was based on statistical analysis. For example, we would do things like age-length regression, where we would look at the size of a fish and determine its age and determine the growth rate. Those statistics were extremely important in developing fisheries management policy.

The natural resources industries, which include agriculture, fisheries, and energy, need to be represented on the council. Actually, I would say they need to be overrepresented. We need academics who are professors of statistics, for sure. Again, large organizations and agricultural institutions all employ statisticians. Having practical, on-the-ground people who have experience in the real world doing real-world analyses the public needs, would be very important.

In closing, we are extremely fortunate to live in our democratic society, where the rights of citizens and the protection of those rights are treated with the utmost importance, so we need to maintain the right of privacy under the new Statistics Act, Bill C-36.

One cannot overestimate the importance of statistical analysis in our everyday lives, much of which we do not see in our day-to-day lives. The decisions that governments, institutions, industries, and universities make, by and large, are based on statistical theory. Under Bill C-36, it had better be good statistical theory.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I am a bit confused. I was confused by the bill, and now I am a bit confused by the debates in front of us. I was confused by the bill, because the Liberals promised that they would bring back the mandatory long-form census, and that is not actually in the bill, and they promised in their platform that they would make Statistics Canada fully independent, and of course, that is not in the bill either. I do not think my confusion is just because it took me 48 hours to get back to Ottawa from a snowy Victoria in February. However, now I have listened to the debate on the bill, and one thing I can agree with the Conservatives on is the fact that the bill before us shows a paucity of proposals, on the Liberal side, for significant legislation.

I just heard the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa talking about the fact that Conservatives believe in the importance of data, but it was the Conservative government that eliminated the long-form census and interrupted the long chain of very important data that was important to researchers across the country. He say that he believes that privacy is really important and seems to be opposed to the fact that after 92 years, information from the census might be made public. He seems inordinately concerned that people are being asked about the amount of time it takes them to commute, which I think is important information for transportation. Finally, he is concerned about the protection of privacy through Shared Services, when it was the Conservative government that came up with the idea of Shared Services, which might result in the improper storage of data.

Maybe the member can explain to me how his position is consistent with what the Conservative government did before.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we Manitobans, who are often laughed at because of our very fine weather, do so much appreciate when it snows in Victoria.

Regarding the long-form census, this has truly become a red herring. Most statistics is not mandatory. When voters are sampled, it is not mandatory for them to reply. When I was a fisheries biologist and took the fish out of the net, I did not have to ask them. We did it.

The point is that with proper sampling design, a proper sample size, and a proper project design, we can get equally good, if not better, information.

I would recommend that my hon. friend pick up a statistics textbook and look up sampling theory. If sampling is done right, it is astonishingly accurate. Much of what we do in this country, as I said earlier, in terms of decision-making, is based on non-coercive, sound sampling theory.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have to disagree with my colleague's last comment, in the sense that the member is trying to give an impression that we can take any sample, and as long as it is thorough enough, in terms of size, and we get the information we require, we can get a good sense of exactly what is happening in a broader population.

The mandatory long-form census and the results that came from it, and this is what we heard from our science community, the professionals and individuals who know what it takes to get the job done, is one of the reasons we are making Statistics Canada more independent. That is one of the reasons for this legislation.

Like the member across the way, I went to university and studied some statistics. However, I recognize that there are individuals who have far superior expertise on the issues, and they would say that the mandatory form, for example, was absolutely necessary to validate the type of statistics we need to collect from Canadians.

I wonder if the member would provide his thoughts on the importance of professionals, those who have the expertise, and their ability to contribute to the bigger picture and make sure we get it right.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague opposite is making the assumption that to be professional it has to be a mandatory long-form census, which is clearly nonsense.

Again, to go back to sampling theory, it is extremely complex. If we consider all the members of Parliament in this House as a population, and we ask every one of them a question about something, that is not a sample. We are talking to the entire population, and what we get out of that is accurate.

However, in most cases, we are not able to ask an entire population a question or look at the population of the crop of wheat, for example, in western Canada, so we have to do a sample.

Of course, the qualifications of the statisticians and the type of sampling program they initiate is absolutely critical, but that has actually nothing to do with the mandatory long-form census.

I go back to the point that there are innumerable statistical studies in Canada, in North America, and around the world, that are not mandatory and that provide equally accurate information, assuming the sampling program is done competently.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of comment, during debate on the bill, about the issue of independence. I will give my hon. colleague a moment to expand on one of the points he made in his speech around independence versus accountability. We indeed brought expert advisors to government to have independence to execute their tasks to the best of their professional ability, but accountability to Parliament and accountability to the voters are also important considerations that we cannot lose track of.

The ultimate independent government agency, independent from an elected Parliament, is a dictatorship where there is not actual accountability to the voters, so I would like him to comment on the chain of accountability as well.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, again, this is a matter of policy. The minister and the government of the day can make a policy statement that they absolutely will not interfere in the work that the chief statistician does, unless there is gross negligence or enough Canadians find a certain program so deeply offensive that they petition Parliament.

We could set the bar quite high in terms of when a minister would make a comment on a study that the chief statistician was doing. Having said that, if one looks at the history of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics and then StatsCan, one would find that issue rarely came up, unless I am mistaken. That organization, starting with the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, was a group of dedicated, professional statisticians, and I think they have done exemplary work over the years and continue to do so.

It is only us Conservatives who have the principles to actually think citizens are sovereign in their own country, and this is why I am so very pleased to be one of those Conservatives.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Mr. Speaker, for my good friend from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, one of the questions that has come up is about accuracy and the point that we get so much more accuracy if we have the long form census.

I wonder if he could comment on the Jedi religion that seemed to really spike up when people were forced to put their religious affiliations on the mandatory long form census.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am part of that religion myself. No, that is not quite true. When we make something mandatory, there are people in our society—good, solid, headstrong, independent people who value their privacy, their personal liberties—who will make a mockery of it, the census.

I go back to the point about the long form census. If the sample size is 20 people in the country, so it is mandatory, so what? That is a lousy sample. We could have a voluntary census. If we sampled 10,000 people in the country, we would have a much higher rate of compliance, and at the same time, accuracy would be so much higher.

I want to thank my hon. friend for the question, I want to make the point that never in my parliamentary career or when I was contemplating one did I ever think I would be making a speech on statistical sampling theory.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Before resuming debate, I would like to inform hon. members that there have been more than five hours of debate on this motion during this first round. Consequently, all subsequent interventions shall be ten minutes for speeches and five minutes for questions and comments.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I was so looking forward to giving a 20-minute speech on this bill. It really pains me to be limited to 10 minutes, but again I appreciate the opportunity to speak.

The government prides itself on evidence-based policy. Statistics Canada is a critically important institution because it provides the evidence for that evidence-based policy. The independence of Statistics Canada is crucial because, without it, we might end up with policy-based evidence; we might end up with Statistics Canada producing information or failing to produce information in response to political directives. Therefore, if we are concerned about having good governance and evidence-based policy, it is really important that we have an independent professional statistics agency such as Statistics Canada. That is why this is an important piece of legislation.

Why is it a timely topic? It is a timely topic because, just in the past few years, we have had two chief statisticians resign in protest of a lack of independence for Statistics Canada.

The first one of these resignations was Munir Sheikh, who resigned in protest of the previous government's very strange decision to eliminate the mandatory long form census. This was a decision that was objected to by almost every sector of society. It was a very odd decision. I do not know if it was an attempt to pander to certain libertarian elements, but there was never a big groundswell of Canadians who objected to having to fill out the census. It was once every decade in terms of the full census; or once every five years, if we include the partial census. Therefore, it was a very odd decision, and the chief statistician resigned to protest it.

We actually just had an interesting discussion in this House about the necessity for a mandatory long form census. My colleague from Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa said we do not actually need to make it mandatory because we can just rely on sampling and proper sampling techniques. However, in order to design the sample, they need to know what the whole population is. In order to know that the sample is representative, they have to at some point have done a census of the entire population. Therefore a mandatory complete census is really the necessary foundation for all of the good sampling work that my colleague was mentioning. He used the analogy of this Parliament, and he stated that if we asked all 338 MPs to respond to something, that would not be a sample; that would be the entire population. That is true enough.

However, let us try to imagine constructing a representative sample of the House of Commons. In order to do that, we would need to know something about the whole population. For example, we would need to know how many MPs are in each party caucus if we wanted our sample to have the right number of people from each party. We would need to know how many seats there are from each province in order to make sure our sample was regionally representative. Just using that rudimentary analogy, it is easy to see that people can do a lot of good research and statistical work based on sampling, but in order to construct those samples, they do periodically need to have some census of the entire population. That is why almost all advanced industrialized countries have these mandatory census practices periodically. It is a common-sense thing, and we are glad to have it back in Canada, although certainly, as some of my colleagues have pointed out, this legislation falls somewhat short in terms of making it truly mandatory.

The second chief statistician who resigned was Wayne Smith. He resigned quite recently, just in the past few months, to protest the way in which Statistics Canada's arrangement with Shared Services Canada had impaired the agency's independence. This is the real motivation for this bill being brought before the House.

The government, in response to this controversy of Wayne Smith's resignation, wants to be able to say that it is doing something to protect the independence of Statistics Canada, that it is taking action and dealing with the problem.

The odd thing is that this bill does not say anything about Statistics Canada's relationship with Shared Services Canada. It does not propose any sort of alternative model for Statistics Canada to get the IT services on which its important work depends.

While in terms of chronology and perhaps in terms of political positioning, the bill is a response to Mr. Smith's resignation, the content of the bill actually would not do anything to address the problems that motivated Mr. Smith's resignation.

We in the NDP are going to support this bill in order to get it before committee so we can try to make some improvements to it and so we can perhaps address some of these problems. However, it is important to note that in its current form this legislation would fall far short of dealing with what precipitated this crisis in Statistics Canada.

It is worth talking a bit about Shared Services Canada. This was really an attempt by the previous Conservative government to cut corners and to cut costs a bit and to say that, because it had IT services in many different departments and agencies, it would be more efficient to centralize them into one IT agency. There is some logic to that. One can imagine how it might have worked, but as with so many of these efforts in the federal government to centralize functions between departments and agencies, there were huge problems in the implementation and in the execution.

One issue with Shared Services Canada is that all departments and agencies were ordered to transfer their IT staff to the new Shared Services Canada, which made sense. However, Shared Services Canada needs more than IT professionals. It needs administrative assistants. It needs financial people. It needs other types of managers. The way those people were put in place was that all the other departments and agencies were told that they needed to send x number of administrative assistants, x number of accountants, etc., to Shared Services Canada.

What did the managers in these other departments and agencies do? Did they send their best and most reliable employees away? No, they used it as an opportunity to perhaps send people whom they were trying to remove from their organizations anyway. In that sense, Shared Services Canada was really set up to fail through bad implementation and bad execution.

However, even if we are able to fix Shared Services Canada and get it functioning properly, there is still a huge problem with making Statistics Canada totally reliant on this other entity. By definition, that impinges upon the independence of Statistics Canada. In setting up Shared Services Canada, the government did recognize that there were some agencies in government that were so sensitive they had to have control of their own IT. This Parliament that we are in right now is an example of that. Other countries such as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand also manage to exempt their statistical agencies from their centralized government-wide IT structures.

Mr. Smith has a valid point in suggesting that Statistics Canada could be exempt from Shared Services Canada, and I am really hoping that is something we can look at in committee after passing the bill in the current reading.

There is definitely room to consider other arrangements. Statistics Canada maybe could have its own IT capacity. Failing that, if we do want Statistics Canada to work with Shared Services Canada, maybe Statistics Canada could at least have the option of sometimes going to other suppliers if Shared Services Canada cannot provide the required support. However, one way or another, we need to find a way to give Statistics Canada the kind of technical support and the kind of IT infrastructure it needs to do this critically important research and to provide this critically important information and evidence. I am disappointed that the bill we are considering today really fails to address that problem at all.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question with respect to making the information public after 92 years. Albeit that is looking at an individual in a vacuum, I am wondering what impact the member feels that would have on family members, children, and grandchildren?