I'd like to speak from two points of view.
First of all, I don't think this is a technical debate. The reason I don't think it's a technical debate.... There is the issue of the statistics. I'm not going to deny, as a statistician, that if one makes the form voluntary without any other incentives, then in fact there will certainly be a change in the response rate. One should know, however, that there has already been a change in the response rate. One should also know that there are other factors that have to be considered.
In 2006, Statistics Canada went to using the Internet. There are many people, for example, who don't know how to use the Internet and simply turn it over to their children. So we don't know exactly the quality of the information we're getting once the information is turned over on the Internet. It could be a 15-year-old going ahead and putting in the information rather than an adult, as we were doing in the past.
Now, I agree with the idea or the general principle that using the Internet is a less costly way and probably a much more efficient way of doing it, but what I'm saying is that there are other factors that come into play with regard to the quality of the information and how much people can rely on the information we have.
A second issue is that Canada is one of the few nations—a handful of nations—that actually do a full census every five years. There are rolling censuses being done continuously. The Americans have moved to what's called the “American community survey”. We have a national household survey.
The American community survey, of course, is going ahead and every month sending out a certain number of forms and requiring it. It is mandatory in the United States. I disagree with that, though. There is such a thing known as negative bias that does occur when you make a survey mandatory. There are studies on negative bias, and the question is, how do you overcome it?
Well, let's just take a look. Here is our survey. On one end of the scale you have the penalties. If you want to make sure that everybody does a particular survey, make it 10 years in jail, 10 years for not answering any questions--