Thank you, Mr. Chair; and thank you all for attending.
Mr. McCallum had an interesting question. He mentioned something about the real people. It's interesting that he didn't ask the two real people. I'm not suggesting that any of you are not real people, but the people he was talking about are sitting right here at the table, so I'm going to give them an opportunity to respond to some of the questions he asked.
I think it's really important to once again set out clearly that what we're talking about is voluntary or mandatory. I really believe that if we give the real people a chance, two things are going to happen.
Number one, patriotic Canadians will respond wholeheartedly. If we tell people, “Folks, we need this information and we'd really like to have this information; we want you to contribute to this as well,” I really think, be they marginalized, rich, poor, educated, or uneducated, we'll get a good cross-section.
Number two—and I think this is important—I know my constituents, because I do something called “Coffee and tea with the MP”. I get right down with my constituents. I buy them coffee. This is a little gadget I get. This was developed over a number of years. We have some pretty interesting conversations. It took a long time, but they trust me and I trust them. I think once we formulate this new pattern they're going to come to me and say, “Dave, why are they asking this?”, “Why are they asking that?”, “Why do we have to...?”, and that's really healthy. I think we're going to engage them.
Mr. Henderson, you mentioned that you had to spend some money. So I'm going to give some time to both you and Mr. Lam, the people who are really affected.
You had to spend some money to fill out your last one, and we heard how busy you were in that season too. But how would you feel if you knew that StatsCan was selling some of the information you sent them?