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.