Industry Committee on July 27th, 2010

[Ernie Boyko]

I'm sorry, I do not have any information on that.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay. I guess I'm a little concerned about that.

I'd like to go back to Mr. Veldhuis. Many today who favour the mandatory aspects of this whole process have really been running all day from the penalties. I want you to talk a little bit about whether you think it's appropriate at all to have penalties here. Is it necessary, in your opinion, to coerce Canadians in order to get this information?

I found it interesting as the day has gone on that we've had Liberal MPs here who don't seem to want to have any mandatory penalties to it. We had witnesses earlier, such as Mr. Drummond, talking about fines perhaps but nothing more than that. So do you have any comments on that? It's easier for the opposition to say they want this thing to be mandatory but they certainly don't want any penalties. But I think “mandatory” means they do have them, right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you, Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Veldhuis, would you care to respond to that?

[Niels Veldhuis]

Yes.

I don't believe that the government should fine Canadians to disclose personal information. I certainly don't think that the government should threaten jail or put people in jail for not disclosing personal information. Again, this has nothing to do with whether or not those actions actually occur. It has to do with whether or not people can be threatened. And people certainly will comply when they're threatened with fines and when they're threatened with jail time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Thank you very much, Mr. Veldhuis and Mr. Anderson.

We're now going to go to Mr. Gravelle, briefly.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Drummond, Mr. Lake keeps bringing up jail time. I guess he doesn't understand that no Canadian has ever been put in jail for refusing to answer the long-form census. Mr. Bernier blames the Liberals for the 2006 census, yet this morning Mr. Clement was here and he rhymed off three or four questions—I don't remember what the questions were—that were inappropriate to be on the census.

If the government owns the census, couldn't Mr. Clement have removed those questions, and couldn't the Conservative government remove the fine if they wanted to?

[Don Drummond]

Yes, sure. As I said before, I think the most important thing is the question of whether or not there's a sentiment that it's part of your civic duty to fill it out. I think the fines and the penalty are relatively irrelevant relative to that.

Absolutely there's a discretion over the questions. There are a lot of questions on the form, and they can be modified. It's entirely within the government's power to do so.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

They can be modified by the minister or the government.

[Don Drummond]

Right.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

So if that is possible, they can also remove the fines. If Mr. Clement was not happy with the questions, he could have easily removed them. Is that not true?

[Don Drummond]

Yes, absolutely.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

So what are we doing here? Is this just a media event, or...? What are we doing here?

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

That's a bit of a comment, so I don't think the witnesses are going to respond to that.

We're going to end there, Mr. Gravelle.

Thank you very much for your comments.

We'll suspend the meeting to 3:30.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Welcome to the 29th meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology this July 27, 2010.

We're here, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), for study of the long-form portion of the census.

In front of us on the fifth panel today we have Madam Stoddart and Mr. Baggaley from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; we have Mr. Coleman from the National Citizens Coalition; we have Madam Sheutiapik and Madam Cooper from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami; we have Mr. Paul McKeever, as an individual; and finally, we have Madam Kenny from the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada.

Welcome to all of our witnesses.

Without further ado, we will begin with questions and comments from members of this committee, beginning with Mr. McTeague, who I understand will be sharing his time with Mr. Rota.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chong.

Witnesses, thank you for being here today.

Ms. Stoddart, I just wanted to start with you with a very simple question. In your time as Privacy Commissioner and before that period, can you tell us how many complaints you have received relating to the long-form census form?

[Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada]

Over the last 20 years, we've received 50 complaints about the census. I can't break them down into short- or long-form.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

So 50 complaints in 20 years covering four censuses?

[Jennifer Stoddart]

Yes.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

That's astounding. I would have thought the government would have had a far better argument to make.

Let me turn to you, Madam Sheutiapik and Ms. Cooper. I have read your brief--compliments of my colleague Carolyn Bennett, who has a little bit more experience in this area--and I am concerned about the comment that you have made here with respect to your group, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. You've said in here that your “long-term goal of closing the gaps in health, education and economic development between Inuit and other Canadians” is a priority, and that the long-form census is “one of the key tools we use to assess the conditions in which Inuit live and to propose evidence-based social policy measures to address the scope of our social disparities”. You further say, “The ill-conceived cabinet decision to repeal the mandatory long-form census in favour of a voluntary survey in 2011 has a severe impact on our ability to close those gaps.”

That's a pretty solid statement of condemnation of what Mr. Clement and others are trying to do. I take it that there are more than 50 Inuit who are interested in this. Can you explain and expand on why you object to this?

[Elisapee Sheutiapik, Board Member, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami]

Thank you for the question.

You have to remember that in the long form there are questions such as how many bedrooms are in the house. In Arctic communities it's too cold to be homeless. There's hidden homelessness. We'll never get that data if that long form is not filled out.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

My God; I hope my colleagues in the Conservative Party just heard that.

In terms of further information, you say you have a relationship with the census. Are many Inuit involved with the census taking?

[Elisapee Sheutiapik]

Actually, there is an amazing partnership that has been developed between Arctic communities and the government when it comes to Statistics Canada. There is a partnership there where they have trained bilingual Inuit people who can work with unilinguals on filling out these forms. It took a lot of time to educate people about how important this data is, because after all, we use those data to help us plan into the future.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

It's astounding that the Prime Minister has made a great deal about sovereignty in the north and yet is prepared to walk away from something that's vital to you as Canadians in the north.

Thank you. I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Rota.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. McTeague.

Thank you for being here.

If you don't mind, I'll continue on that. You say there are some new skills that have been developed within the community in relating information and collecting information. Now, with what's being said right now in minimizing the importance of the census, how will that affect what has been built up over the years?

[Elisapee Sheutiapik]

Well, we use that data, and once you change the kind of data you're collecting, you're not going to have data to be able to compare what was in the past and moving forward. You're going to change the different kind of data that's being collected. And it's real data that we need.

Language is an issue in Arctic communities. Those are the kinds of information that are asked about as well in the long form. Moving forward, language and the use of it is a concern, so moving forward we need to know about and continue to keep tabs on where our language is at, not just housing but language as well.