Look, I think everybody believes the government should deliver services efficiently, so I think you have an obligation to find the information the best way you can at the cheapest cost to the taxpayers and make sure you can deal with a lot of the concerns that were raised here. But I just honestly don't believe, in a society such as Canada, that by forcing people to answer questions....
I'm sorry about the reference to Greg Weston, but I had read a column and he was talking about that.
But people do get intimidated; they get called, and get threatened with jail. A lot of people are afraid of big government and the bureaucracy that goes with it, as I said earlier. I don't know if you get great information with that threat, too, so I think you have to find a way to educate Canadians on why these censuses are important, deal with questions that are relevant, and drop the ones that quite frankly aren't.
I read it on the plane today, and there are a lot of questions in that survey that I think give you no value. I think you have to work on getting questions that can make the country more effective, more efficient, more opportunistic in today's global economy. But to go back to taxpayers and the citizens and say “Do this or we'll throw you in jail” is just something that a government of any stripe should not be proud of.
This shouldn't be a political conversation. This should be one that we all agree on. Throwing somebody in jail or the threat of it should not be there in a country like Canada.