Thank you, Chair.
Witnesses, thank you.
Thanks to my colleague, Carolyn Bennett, for driving this through Parliament. The will of Parliament is very different from the wishes of the government. For obvious reasons, the questions reflect very seriously the concern we have that the definition of who we are as a country is very much going to be skewed.
Mr. Smith, you find yourself in the unenviable task and position of having to.... I'm looking at a national household survey data quality report--which I pulled off this morning--indicating that it contains all the questions that StatsCan contemplated for inclusion in the 2011 long census form. NHS is therefore identical in content to what would have been collected in the 2011 long-form census.
In your view, why would we not simply continue with what we have and simply change the word “mandatory”? How difficult would that be? I appreciate the fact that some are saying we can't unscramble eggs, or whatever definition you want to put in there, but the reality is to simply change the top page and leave the census as it is, but in a mandatory form, particularly the long-form census. What would be the difficulty?