Industry Committee on July 27th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Nadeau.

Mr. Petit.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Simard.

I believe you are from the same region as Mr. Bouchard. You teach at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. You said you use Canadian statistics. As you know, there are both voluntary questions and compulsory questions. We have talked about that enough since the beginning.

During the last census, in 2005—I was not yet a member at that time—all the questions in the long form were compulsory. All we want to do is make answering those same questions voluntary instead of mandatory.

A little while ago, you answered some very specific questions put by my colleague. In your view, should it be mandatory or voluntary to answer a question on what time I leave for work? The distinctions are very subtle.

What is your opinion on that? That is exactly what we are talking about.

[Martin Simard]

The way I see it, the main problem with the voluntary form has to do with methodology. When it comes to everything else, the questions can always be revised, as some questions may indeed appear to be a bit silly or pointless. But it is important to keep in mind that some of the questions in the old long form, which will be made voluntary and given a different name, are very useful, such as those on mobility or where people live. They provide information on Canadians' moves, on their mobility for work, from day to day.

Right now, I am researching what is known as commuting, in other words, travel for work, in the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean region. All of that could be useful for the purpose of transportation, land-use planning or regional economic development. So....

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I have to stop you there, Mr. Simard, as I do not have a lot of time.

Like me, you have read the long form, since you are here to give evidence on that very thing. You will have noticed that some of the questions in that form are the same ones that the provincial and federal governments ask me on my income tax return every year. What is more, that same questionnaire asks me to add the tax from both sources, which other provinces do not do. I have to add them. Do you think I should be put in jail and fined because I made a mistake in calculating my taxes? Do you think it is mandatory or voluntary? I have already provided that information voluntarily; the governments have it. Are they just too lazy to share the information, or am I really missing something in terms of what is mandatory and what is voluntary?

I have already provided that information in full: if I am to receive an old age pension, employment insurance or child care costs that I have paid out. I have given all of that information to the governments every year, along with my address, my telephone number and my postal code. I even told them who I was living with, how I was living and whether I was living with someone of the same sex. I have given that information every year. Why should I provide that information again today on a compulsory basis? Why would it not be voluntary? Since I have already given it, I will give it again. Do you not see voluntary participation as a good thing?

[Martin Simard]

The act of asking the same questions twice may seem silly. I agree with you that certain questions should not be included in the census because that information can be obtained in other ways, for example, from the income tax return.

However, I do not think that is the issue here. To come back to the compulsory nature of the form, I think the section on punishment by imprisonment in the Statistics Act should be changed, because it is clearly excessive.

You need to put that in perspective, though. The obligation being imposed on Canadians is not very demanding. It is not something that is impossible to do. It is relatively easy to do, and something we do for the public good. In my view, someone who complains about how long the form is will regret or perhaps experience, in two or five years, the effects of a lack of public policy targeting groups in his or her situation. So it is in the person's interest to fill out the form, even if he or she does not realize it.

Let us be real here. The person is not being asked to take part in forced labour in Siberia for six months, but to fill out a form that takes ten minutes to do.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Doucet, you introduced yourself earlier as a citizen who came here to testify. A number of questions have been asked since the beginning. Those questions existed in 2005, and they were mandatory. What we are doing is making criminals out of honest people if they do not answer.

You heard the questions I asked Mr. Simard. I have already given the answers to all the questions in the long form to both the provincial and federal governments, including the one on the number of bedrooms. The Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation has all that information.

Do you think people should have to answer those questions under penalty of a fine or jail term?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Petit.

[Bradley Doucet]

I don't think it should be mandatory. The arguments that I've heard here today and that I read in the newspapers for keeping the mandatory long form seem to me to boil down to, well, the information we get from this is useful, and if we changed it we wouldn't get quite as good information; it might be a little less useful.

I don't think it's the government's job to do everything that is useful. I think human beings should be free to pursue their own goals, their own aims in life, as long as they don't interfere with other people's freedoms, as long as they don't use force against other people. I think the idea that this is useful and therefore it should be mandatory is basically saying that my freedom is inconvenient to the government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Doucet.

The last round goes to Mr. Gravelle.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chong.

We've heard a lot, Mr. McLeish, from the Conservative side that the big issue here is the threat of jail time and fines. We've also heard this morning that the government owns the census. Is it fair for us to think or for me to say that the government with the stroke of a pen could abolish these fines and then we wouldn't be here today playing up to the media about putting people in jail? All we have to do is bring in a private member's bill or a government bill removing the fines. Is that not something the government could do?

[Prof. Don McLeish]

Well, you know and I know that the government controls penalties under the Statistics Act--certainly they can change those penalties--and that Statistics Canada does not.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

They could do it at the next sitting of Parliament, then, if they wanted to.

[Prof. Don McLeish]

Presumably, if they have opposition support.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Okay. So they are just playing up to the media, more or less, wanting to get media attention.

There's also been a lot said about the confidentiality of the census. I want to read to you question 53 from the 2006 census. The statement--it's not a question--says:

The Statistics Act guarantees the confidentiality of your census information. Only if you mark “YES” to this question will your personal information be made public, 92 years after the 2006 Census. If you mark “NO” or leave the answer blank, your personal information will never be made publicly available.

So what is the problem?

[Prof. Don McLeish]

Well, I dearly wish that my information could be compromised under that clause, but I don't think it'll happen.

I don't want to join the political fray here. I want to look forward. Statistics Canada, as you frequently heard, is one of the pre-eminent statistical agencies in the world. Their independence and therefore their credibility is at stake here.

I'd like to read a one-sentence quote from the most famous living statistician in the world, Sir David Cox. He is a U.K. statistician and former head of Nuffield College in Oxford. He says on this matter--they were discussing this at lunch, in fact--that they had always “...greatly admired Statistics Canada as a model of what a government statistics service should be and rarely is. That makes it all the sadder to see its integrity in any way undermined.”

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Simard, we have heard about a great many organizations that benefit from the census, including schools, large and small cities, planners, Statistics Canada and francophones. Who will benefit if we get rid of the census?

[Martin Simard]

I do not think anyone will benefit. Some people who are more sensitive may feel more comfortable, but as I said earlier, what the government is asking is not unreasonable: filling out a few pages, which takes between 10 and 15 minutes to do but which goes a long way towards helping citizens, and supporting economic development as well as research and planning.

I think we are really looking for problems where there are none. Everything was just fine until this bill was clumsily introduced. The intentions behind it were good, but when you know a little bit about statistical methods, processing and surveys, it becomes clear that it is a mistake. Everyone will lose with this bill. As they say, it is a lose-lose situation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Gravelle and Mr. Simard.

You have a point of order, Mr. Lake?

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

In his last question, Mr. Gravelle talked about the elimination of the census. No one here is saying that the long form is being eliminated.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

That's a point of information. I'm not going to allow it to go ahead.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

We're simply saying that we're not going to throw people in jail who decide that they don't want to answer questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

That's not a point of order. It's a point of information.

The witness testimony is finished for this round.

This meeting is suspended until two o'clock.

I want to thank our four witnesses, Mr. Doucet, Professor Tanny, Mr. McLeish, and Professor Simard, for their testimony.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Welcome to the 29^th meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, on Tuesday, July 27, 2010. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are here to study the long-form portion of the census.

Welcome to our fourth panel of witnesses.

I want to welcome in front of us today Mr. Darrell Bricker from Ipsos Reid; Mr. Boyko, the adjunct data librarian for the Carleton University library data centre; Monsieur Paul Hébert, the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal; and Mr. Don Drummond, chair of the advisory panel on labour market information. Welcome to all four of you.

We'll have about an hour of questions and comments from members of this committee, beginning with Mr. Garneau.

We have a point of order from Mr. Lukiwski. Go ahead.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

It's actually probably a point of clarification.

Do we also have Mr. Veldhuis?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

That's right. Thank you for that.

We also have, via teleconference from Vancouver, Niels Veldhuis, the senior research economist from the Fraser Institute.

Mr. Veldhuis, welcome to our panel.