Evidence of meeting #32 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
In the interest of order, only one person at a time has the floor.
Currently Mr. Rutherford has the floor. If he poses questions, they are through the chair and the chair may wish to direct the answer to you, Mr. Garneau, but right now Mr. Rutherford has the floor, as does Mr. Lake.
Go ahead, Mr. Rutherford.
As an Individual
I don't know how far you want to extend the argument, because obviously you guys seem quite firm on this.
As an Individual
Okay, then, really, the whole process that got you guys elected clearly has deficiencies. If only those who were motivated to make a decision voted for you, then clearly you're suggesting it's not valid.
That clearly is not on, right?
Mr. Garneau, would you agree with that?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you, Mr. Rutherford.
Mr. Lake, do you have anything further to add?
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Okay.
Thank you to all the members of the committee for your comments and questions.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing.
The meeting stands suspended until 2 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Hello everyone.
Welcome to our witnesses as we resume today's meeting.
In front of us on our third panel for today we have Madame Taillon, who is from the Canadian Council on Social Development; Monsieur Noreau, from l'Association francophone pour le savoir; and Mr. Zhong, from the Toronto Community and Culture Centre. As well, via video conference from Victoria, B.C., we have Mr. McFarlane, who is an editorial writer for the Times Colonist.
Each of you will have five minutes for an opening statement, beginning with Madame Taillon.
Peggy Taillon President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Council on Social Development
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
My family and I just flew back from Yellowknife at one o'clock in the morning, so you can take advantage of the fact that I have a bit of a fuzzy brain today. But it is great to be here.
For those of you who don't know us, CCSD, the Canadian Council on Social Development, is Canada's longest-established social policy organization in the country. We were founded in 1920 by Charlotte Whitton. We have a long history of working collaboratively with successive governments. Just to give you a couple of highlights, CCSD developed concepts of EI, disability, and old age pensions, and worked collaboratively with governments to roll those out—very foundational Canadian social infrastructure.
One of our flagship programs today is the community social data strategy. This is a pan-Canadian partnership where members collectively purchase over $900,000 worth of census and other StatsCan data. Members of our consortium include police services, municipalities, United Ways, provincial government departments, front-line service agencies, social planning councils, and many others. The partners use the data to respond to troubling trends in our local communities. The information allows communities to focus their efforts at the neighbourhood level, making better use of our tax dollars and targeting services to those who are most in need.
From our perspective, losing the long-form census is equal to the government turning off Canada's navigation system. Those of you who are supporting this decision need to really think and consider the impact very carefully. Ask yourselves whether you are willing to accept responsibility for the following.
Ten years from now, when your local hospital has an empty maternity ward and your parents can't get geriatric care because the decision-makers didn't have accurate census data to plan for which services were required in that community, what will you say to them? Ten years from now, when the police take five minutes longer than necessary to respond to a burglary in your neighbourhood and thieves get away because a police force didn't have the information from the long-form census data to effectively plan for staffing allocation, what will you say to your neighbours? Ten years from now, when there's an epidemic of a new disease and doctors don't have accurate population data to plan how to respond, will you take your share of the blame for any resulting deaths? Ten years from now, when a new school sits empty on one side of town while another is overcrowded because the census data that informed the school planning and construction is no longer available, what will you say to your community? Ten years from now when fire trucks take an extra three minutes to respond to a blaze at the seniors' home because they didn't have the census data to determine the best location for a new fire hall, will you console the families of those who don't make it? Ten years from now, when your church has to close because of an unanticipated decline in membership, while the congregation speaking a different language is filling up a school auditorium, will you take the responsibility? Ten years from now, when governments at all levels are wasting taxpayer money delivering services that are less efficient and less targeted to local communities because of less accurate information, will you be silent and gladly paying for the wasted time and resources, because you're a taxpayer as well?
Over 340 organizations that serve or represent the ordinary Canadians you wish to hear from have spoken out very clearly on this matter. They have put forward thoughtful alternatives to cancelling this important tool. They have responded to the concerns about privacy, intrusiveness, and coercion.
Privacy? StatsCan is a fortress. Our information is virtually impenetrable. We have to navigate it on a regular basis.
Intrusive? As has been stated before, I know, there are many measures, rules, and regulations that could be considered intrusive in this country: seat belts, stop signs, and airport security. We all understand that these are put in place for our collective good. The same can be said about the long-form census.
Coercion? We actually agree with you: No one should be jailed for not filling it out. But we all know no one has.
Thank you.
Conservative
Pierre Noreau President, Association francophone pour le savoir
Hello. I represent the Association francophone pour le savoir, Acfas, the largest association of francophone researchers in the world. Acfas was established in 1923. Its membership includes researchers from practically every francophone university that conducts research in French and represents all disciplines. Every year Acfas organizes a conference that brings together approximately 6,000 researchers from 25 countries. Two years ago the Acfas conference was held at the University of Ottawa.
It is a privilege for me to address the members of the committee today. I have often said that if citizens had the opportunity to see the work done by parliamentary committees more often and to attend their proceedings in person, they would hold public institutions in higher regard. I have always considered it a privilege to participate in exchanges such as those that will take place later.
The question is whether or not to keep the long and detailed form used every five years by the federal government, specifically Statistics Canada, in order to obtain much more accurate information from the census. The answer is that we must keep it, for five reasons that are generally similar to what Ms. Taillon mentioned in her detailed comments.
First, from a societal perspective, every community should be able to have a certain idea or create a certain image of itself. In order to develop, societies must have self-knowledge. We must know who we are and how we are evolving. The long form must be kept for no other reason than society must have self-knowledge. It provides essential information about our development.
It is also crucial for the government because fundamental public policies are and must be formulated on the basis of very long-term projections, bearing in mind the cost and consequences of decisions made by the state. Therefore, it is vital that these data be available for a number of reasons and primarily because governments must justify a decision on the basis of facts. The best way to obtain the facts needed to make any political decision is to administer a survey that uses a recognized methodology. That survey is the census. That is the justification. It is required by the federal, provincial and, to a greater extent, municipal governments, which do not have the means to carry out such detailed surveys but continually require the data to shape their own decisions with respect to transportation, social development and public services.
It is important on the international level, as indicated by recent articles in Nature, a British journal, which has spoken out against the current debate on whether or not the census long form should be kept. It is important for international relations because Canada constantly provides data to western nations, the OECD, the WHO, and others. A very large number of similar organizations need census data. They make it possible to establish benchmarks and to compare ourselves to other states. To uphold its international reputation, Canada absolutely needs to maintain a very high standard for its data collection. The best way to do this is to ensure the integrity of the existing system, which has truly proven itself.
It is important to the scientific community that I am representing here. In fact, in a very large number of sectors, especially the social sciences and humanities as well as the health sciences—particularly public health—all the data is indispensable. Census data is the starting point for all our research. To a certain extent, it is the foundation for all our research. Therefore, it is not just a survey like all the others. It is the baseline survey. It is the first, the one which gives rise to all other surveys.
It is needed for economic reasons. It determines the parameters for the establishment of a business in one sector or another, and it provides the characteristics of the clients as well as identifies the best place to develop the activities of a business, for example. I am referring strictly to financial and economic reasons. To a certain extent, it is fundamental information for businesses.
For these five reasons, I believe that we must keep the long form and establish appropriate conditions to ensure it is completed. I believe that this has been done so far, that this has been a very useful tool for our communities and that we must continue to use it.
Thank you.
Xinsheng Simon) Zhong (Executive Director, Toronto Community and Culture Centre
I'm Simon Zhong, and I come from the Toronto Community and Culture Centre. I am the executive director of this organization.
Our organization's formal name is the Toronto Mainland Chinese Community Centre. It was founded in 1995 and registered as a charitable organization in 1998. Since 1996, the Toronto Community and Culture Centre has delivered settlement services, social programs, and youth internship programs, which are invariably supported by three levels of government.
The Toronto Community and Culture Centre provides settlement information to walk-in clients, as well as individual services through telephone inquiries and in groups. Since its inception, TCCC has successfully delivered a large number of programs to help immigrants settle in Toronto, which they call their new home, and provides opportunities to newcomers, particularly Mandarin-speaking immigrants, so that they may participate and integrate with mainstream society and volunteer at community events as well. The Toronto Community and Culture Centre targets 250,000 Mandarin-speaking community members in the GTA.
On August 13, 2010, we organized 38 organizations in the Chinese community on behalf of 100,000 community members, who fully support the federal government's change of the previously mandatory long-form census to now voluntary.
In 2006, the filling in of the long-form census became mandatory and was passed as law. Citizens could receive a penalty or be sent to jail if they refused to fill in the mandatory long-form census. It was a violation of the Canadian Privacy Act. The sentence was unnecessary.
The federal statistics department can find statistics based on various other data, such as municipal immigration data, NAPO data, and—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Mr. Zhong, if you have another copy of your prepared text that might assist the translators, I'll ask the clerk to provide that to them.
Thank you.
Xinsheng (Simon) Zhong
We also noticed that, every time during an election, 30% to 60% of people are absent from voting, including the vulnerable communities, and this creates an unjust election.
Recently we conducted a survey in our senior community in regard to this matter. We found that 82% of the seniors in the Mandarin community do not support the mandatory filling in of the long-form census, 8% support the mandatory filling in of the long-form census, and 10% are undecided. This shows that most of our citizens disagree with filling in the mandatory long-form census.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you, Mr. Zhong.
We'll now have the last opening statement, from Mr. McFarlane, from the Victoria Times Colonist.
Lawrie McFarlane Editorial Writer, Victoria Times Colonist, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'll begin by saying that, although I write for the Times Colonist, I am here on my own behalf.
There are three points that I want to bring to your attention. The first has to do with privacy. I've heard it said there is no issue of privacy, that because Statistics Canada anonymizes our data there is no invasion of privacy. There could be no greater misunderstanding.
The notion of privacy that I want to draw to your attention is the need each of us has to be secure in some aspect of our personal lives, the need to keep some part of ourselves to ourselves, the need for an inner sanctuary—in short, the right to privacy in at least some corner of our existence.
On the matter of compelling data, I've heard it said that the important interests at stake here justify gathering this data by compulsion. I disagree. I worked in the health care field for some years. I was a deputy minister of health in B.C., and I set up the first regional health authority in Saskatchewan. We don't compel people to participate in clinical trials, we don't access or link their patient files without consent, and we certainly don't threaten them with jail time if they won't release their medical records.
For example, when the new drug Herceptin was introduced some years back, there were high hopes. Herceptin is used to treat breast cancer. In the laboratory, it demonstrated significant results, but it also produced troubling side effects, including interfering with heart function. More than 5,000 women were recruited in the series of clinical trials to see if it worked, and the results were a triumph. Herceptin improves the chance of surviving breast cancer by about 25%. That translates into 500 lives saved every year in Canada alone. But although the stakes could not have been higher, no one was forced to participate. There was no compulsion.
Finally, in regard to due process, no doubt privacy rights can be withheld if circumstances demand it, but in such eventualities, we expect two things: First, the need must be imperative and there should be no other reliable alternative; and second, there should be sufficient due process to guard against arbitrary use of power. Neither of these requirements is met in the case of the census long form.
Statistics Canada gives the following justification for compelling intimate details of our lives: Community groups, social agencies and consumer groups use the data to support their positions and to lobby governments for social changes;
This scarcely rises to the level of an imperative need. If such a vague and flimsy justification is sufficient, the right of privacy hangs by a very slim thread, for it should be kept in mind that there is no end to the kinds of information that some group or other will find useful. The huge expansion of the census long form in its relatively brief history is proof of that.
Finally, the decision-making process is brazenly arbitrary. The public at large has no meaningful input. Decisions are overwhelmingly influenced by the requirements of statisticians and other groups. At a minimum, some broader oversight is required to balance the interests of research with fundamental privacy rights.
I want to assert that this debate is not about data, statistical reliability, or how many people in opinion polls support the census long form. It is about the right of citizens to guard their privacies—indeed, to be allowed those very privacies. No one who cares about such matters can be untroubled by the direction of events. The last two or three decades have seen intrusions into our personal lives undreamt of by earlier generations. From x-ray strip searches at airports to the B.C. government's plan to create an electronic profile of every citizen, the space we call our own is rapidly being eroded.
It seems to me that the question before you is quite simple: Is there or is there not a right to privacy? If there is, the census long-form abrogates that right.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you, Mr. McFarlane.
We will have just over an hour and a half of questions and comments from members of this committee, beginning with Mr. Bélanger.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you all for participating today.
My first questions are for Mr. Noreau and then for Ms. Taillon.
Mr. Noreau, with regard to Acfas, you mentioned that 6,000 researchers meet every year. In fact, the meeting was held at the University of Ottawa two years ago.
You gave reasons why we should continue to use the detailed long form but you did not specify—and that is my first question—if it should be mandatory or voluntary.
President, Association francophone pour le savoir
There is no doubt about that. Given that it is fundamental research and the basis for a great deal of other research, the data from this survey must be much more reliable than all other data. We have to start with initial research that can be used eventually to verify the validity of other research in progress.
President, Association francophone pour le savoir
It is very clear that the questionnaire must be mandatory in order for the data to be reliable. In the scientific sector, and this is also the case for the public sector, we need reliable data to make decisions. In the sciences, we need reliable data to understand the reality.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
In your opinion, would we obtain reliable data only if the long form was mandatory?
President, Association francophone pour le savoir
It is the only way to ensure that there is effective representativeness of the population being surveyed. It is clear that when participation is no longer mandatory, the problem that arises with any voluntary survey comes into play: some segments of the population never participate in any survey. They drop off the radar. They disappear altogether. We can no longer report anything about these groups because the survey is not reliable or complete enough. Representatives are missing. We know that, in general, youth spend little time on surveys about themselves. The vulnerable and seniors are other such groups. Thus, there are extraordinary gaps in some surveys precisely because they are not mandatory. This cannot happen with the census.
Liberal
Mauril Bélanger Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Mr. Noreau, some people do not seem to think that a survey is not a census and that completing a detailed questionnaire as part of a voluntary survey does not provide data that are as accurate as those collected with a mandatory survey, as you have argued. Why do you believe this?
