Thank you.
When we left off, I was just about to wish everybody a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Allow me to do that retroactively.
The issue we have here is that we did a report on the impact of the long-form census on those populations that are meant to be served by this committee and by the human resources department. There had been other studies done by the status of women committee and by the industry committee. This was about our fiduciary responsibility as a committee.
The problem was that when the report came back in draft form, it cited evidence from other committees in the report--not appended to the report, not attached to the report, but in the report, and not in the proportional way. In other words, almost all the evidence in the other committees was that we need the long-form census, but in a disproportionate way it was evidence supporting the decision of the government that made its way into the report. It just wasn't an accurate or sensible report that way.
Now we're at loggerheads. We got talked out through Christmas; here we are seven weeks later, and what are we going to do about it? Maybe we need to have a little bit of movement on both sides.
If it's the case that we could have a report that cites the evidence that was heard by us, which is appropriate and which is how committees work, I don't have any problem with a reference to the other committees or even inclusion of those studies at the end of our report, but the report that comes from the human resources committee should reflect what this committee heard. That's not new; that's how things are done. If you want to refer to the other reports at the end of it, I don't have a problem with that, but we can't pick and choose in a disproportionate way to bring evidence into our committee that is contrary to what we heard here.
Thank you.