Thank you for this opportunity.
I just wanted to share with the panellists and with the members that, if they haven't done this, they might want to go to a website called “Census Watch”, and there they'll find a short list of names of people who support the government's decision—the cancelling of the mandatory long form—and then there are 15 pages of names of groups and organizations of all sorts that claim this is a wrong decision. They are groups like the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and my own City of Sault Ste. Marie, who have written letters opposing this decision.
We all know how important data and information are. When we were doing the report on poverty that Rob mentioned earlier, which was tabled yesterday, at one point we wanted to see if we could cost what this would require in terms of money, and I moved the motion here that we go to Treasury Board and ask the clerk to check with Treasury Board to see if that was possible. The answer we got back was yes, but it would take a long time because the data that would be needed were quite comprehensive and complicated to put together.
I also asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer if he would do that, and I got the same answer, which indicates to me that if we're going to get the information we need to implement this really important document now, we will need very detailed data, particularly when we look at costing. For example, Food Banks Canada claims it costs the economy of this country $90 billion a year not to do anything about poverty. How do we take that $90 billion and spend it more effectively so that we don't have poverty? Then maybe we could spend that money on other things.
I would ask Rob to comment on that.