Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank all our witnesses for being here today.
I would like to build a little bit on Mr. Murdoch's testimony, because I think it's very important to have concrete, real-life examples of why this issue matters and why it is not just some arcane academic question. I think Mr. Murdoch was very helpful in terms of examples involving child and senior poverty, as well as housing, health, and aboriginal issues in Winnipeg.
I'd like to give a couple of other examples and then ask some of the witnesses, particularly perhaps the professors, if they have other examples of why this is important in practical terms for real people.
My first example is a friend of mine named John Richards, a professor at Simon Fraser University, who has been doing research on aboriginal education issues for five years. He tells me he couldn't do anything without the census. He wouldn't even know how many aboriginal people there were, let alone the situation on health and education. So that's one example, and given that aboriginal people are among the most disadvantaged Canadians, I think policy on that issue is important.
As a second example, my riding of Markham is hugely multicultural—about 40% Chinese; 15% to 20% south Asian—with many, many new Canadians who, if only because of language issues, are less likely than others to fill out a voluntary census. So I think that's important too, because practical issues such as language training and other kinds of welcoming services for new Canadians are important, and without the census we won't have the information that is required.
So those are two examples to add to Mr. Murdoch's five or six, and I wonder if perhaps Professor Veall or some of our other witnesses would have other concrete examples to put on the table.