Industry Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2016

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

That's a yes-or-no answer.

[Anil Arora]

No, in fact, if I may, I think it's important to give you the perspective. Statistics Canada—

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Arora, I understand perspective. This is to me an independent organization. My question is very simple. If you wanted to go in a different direction in relation to Shared Services, can you, yes or no, without having any issues brought up to you by those whom you eventually report to, the minister and this committee?

[Anil Arora]

I would have to have a very convincing rationale to do that, because I believe there are some risks in going in a certain way that need to be weighed against ensuring that an enterprise system gives you the benefits that are there. That's why I'm being very clear here that if I wanted to make a particular decision, I would have to make sure that I'd looked at the consequences of that particular decision.

Statistics Canada has never worked in a completely isolated way, whether it's getting our questionnaires in or out through Canada Post or whether it's using third-party vendors for software or hardware. We've always worked in an interdependent way. I think we need to be very careful about making unilateral decisions of that nature, because we would miss out on all the advantages of the kinds of enterprise infrastructure that's required.

An example is cybersecurity. If there are investments at the Government of Canada level, I would want to make sure that we're part of those investments so that we get the value for the money, that we're getting the kind of security and the kind of protection that we have and that our systems are interoperable with our federal colleagues with whom we work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I'm so sorry, but I have to cut you guys off. That's time.

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Chair, with all due respect, I've tried to ask our witness to be direct, if you will, and you, as the chair, chair the meeting, and when I've asked that, you can step in and decide, but to have somebody eat up all the time when there are questions that need to be asked is kind of ridiculous.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You're asking me if he ate up all the time? It sounded to me like he answered the question. Is there a better answer to the question that you can give?

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

It was a yes-or-no question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

It sounds like he doesn't want to give you a yes-or-no answer.

We're going to move on to Mr. Arya.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Arora, I want to continue on what my colleague Mr. Sheehan talked about, the government's plan to introduce amendments to the Statistics Act.

The minister mentioned that the amendments will replace the National Statistics Council with a newly created Canadian statistics advisory council to reinforce independence, relevance, and transparency in the national statistical system. What is your comment on that?

[Anil Arora]

We have to look at how we go about doing that, and a lot of the details have to be worked out first and foremost, so it's not something that happens tomorrow.

I think the National Statistics Council plays a very important role. We have close to 40 very eminent members on that council who have given very solid advice to the chief statistician for a long time on a whole host of issues.

I think it has served its purpose well, and I think that it's time to step back a little bit and look at the framework of committees that we currently have. We have numerous committees that deal with statistical methods and we have committees that deal with various subject matter areas and so on. In today's context—and I think it's the context that has evolved—there is a greater demand, and internationally as well. What we're doing in Canada, by the way, is not unique. A lot of other countries have also tried to codify this independence in law, so I think Canada is kind of coming in line with that. In fact, OECD and the United Nations have procedures and methods on this, so we're coming in line with that.

I think it's time to look at the Statistics Council and the kind of overall advice that we get. In this independence, we have better checks and balances that will now be enshrined in law for the chief statistician, the minister, and the government of the day to make sure that the independence of Statistics Canada and the trust that Canadians place in it is maintained over time. I think what the signal in the update says very clearly is that the National Statistics Council can play a role in terms of ensuring that the balance between the chief statistician and the minister is maintained through a report on a regular basis to all Canadians. We'll see how that evolves.

I want to make sure of the evolution of the context. It's not that the council in itself is in any way irrelevant or that their advice is no longer necessary. I think we have to figure out a way, within our framework today, to make that advice even richer and more focused.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

In your experience in moving from Statistics Canada to NRCan and then to Health Canada, have you appreciated how the users perceive the quality of the data they receive from Stats Canada? Are you thinking of changing, growing, or modifying the output in any way?

[Anil Arora]

Thank you for that question.

Very much so. Sometimes, as they say, you have to leave the house to understand how good you have it, and also where it is you need to do some renovations, perhaps.

In both those positions it was very clear to me that we had some significant data gaps. It wasn't just that we don't have enough information, but in many cases it's defining what's relevant in today's context. There's the whole clean-tech sector, for example, that has a definitional issue: where does it end and where does it start? What is an innovation that goes toward clean tech? How do we capture that? How do we sustain that over time?

In fact, even when I was at Natural Resources Canada, I started to work with my colleagues at Statistics Canada on how we could improve statistics in the resource sector. It's getting that experience so that when you're moving a policy file or you're dealing with industry and you know there are gaps in what they're telling you, you can actually move things forward. That's not to say these are easy things.

On definitions, we obviously want to try not to be isolated in those definitions, because we live in a global world. Our industries compete globally, so those definitions, if you want to be able to compare with other countries, take time. It's about how we work with our colleagues internationally, how we take leadership roles in those organizations to move forward with things that are in our best interest.

It's the same thing on the health file. In the last couple of years I've been looking at things such as how we reduce sugar or salt and how we market that to kids, which are commitments of the government. Again, there are some real gaps in information about the interrelationships in the factors that contribute to obesity or mental health issues in kids.

There is a real gap. For kids under 12 years old, we really don't have much data, so once again it means working with Statistics Canada to fill those gaps. That takes money, and there are burden issues, so we have to be very cognizant of these things. They're not easy answers. We have to work to look at innovative approaches. In many cases the data are required much more quickly than would be required in a traditional survey, so we have to look at even more innovative ways to do those things, whether that is microsimulation or administrative data. In some ways it's a combination of survey data and administrative data.

Those are all giving me good incentives and imperatives to make some of the changes going forward at Statistics Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

We're going to move to Mr. Dreeshen. You have five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you. I'll try to give the last minute to Mr. Nuttall to complete his discussion.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on your appointment.

I too am from U of A, my alma mater in computing science as well as mathematics, but perhaps at a time earlier than you. I also had the opportunity to be with the Minister of Science when we went to the OECD Blue Sky III conference in Belgium. Of course, Blue Sky II happened here in Ottawa in 2006, where we were taking a look at data management and trying to find out the types of things that are happening in the world.

You mentioned in the discussion that your data in Europe seems to be better than it is in Canada, so my first question is, what other methods are being used for data collection in the other OECD countries that you feel you may be able to incorporate?

[Anil Arora]

Just for the record, I didn't say they have better data than we have. I think that was a preamble to a question that was asked of me.

I think they have strengths and they have an environment where they've obviously evolved their system. Given their context, going way back, information was collected in registers and the populations of many of those countries were quite happy to have governments collect and keep it. People were quite happy to update the government on life transitions, and so on. There's a whole context there.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Right, so there hasn't been much difference. Certainly we saw both business and government showing their wares while they were there, and it was quite impressive, but hopefully we are on track.

The other thing is that you were there from 1997 to 2010. Perhaps you could comment on the anomaly of 20,000 Canadians declaring themselves to be followers of the religion of Jedi, the guardians of peace and justice, in the 2001 census release. When we look at that, and as someone who has looked at statistics and different analyses, you need to have some way to sift through some of that.

When we talked about a 98% response rate, and the question was.... I'm sure we got all this perfect data from there. I haven't been to one of those churches yet, but it's something that a person could comment on quickly.

[Anil Arora]

I didn't want to be flippant with your first question. There are clearly lessons to be learned from other jurisdictions the world over. We are very much connected with our colleagues. In fact, I hosted the Conference of European Statisticians a couple of weeks back, and I've had interactions with those fora before.

Absolutely, we look at lessons learned. They look at us and what we're doing, and we look at the work they're doing. Whether it's in microsimulation, small area estimation, or looking at administrative data stores and how we tease out and get information from those, I think that's the advantage of working in this kind of global statistical field. There's a lot of innovation even there that we work on collectively. That's the first point.

Even just trading in value, for example, is a concept that is important to us. We're leading some of those efforts internationally.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

If you could get to Jedi, then I'll get back to...

[Anil Arora]

Look, the census is a self-enumerating vehicle. In many questions, there is a space where people can write in a response, because we can't think of every possibility that's out there. Yes, from time to time you will see that you do get that kind of thing. It's rare, very rare, but it does happen, and in that case you're right that it did happen. We recognized it and we talked about it.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

I'll give the rest of my time to Mr. Nuttall. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You have about 45 seconds.

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you.

Quickly, I think there are two issues I wanted to highlight. Number one, could you confirm if it is your position that if you wanted to have an exemption from Shared Services, you could do that?

[Anil Arora]

There is nothing in the Statistics Act that says I can or cannot do it. It is a matter of policy, and it has to make sense.

As I have said before, if I had the rationale that made it absolutely clear that this was the only way that I could do business and I could sustain that model, then the answer is yes.

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Previously there was a report that outlined a number of items, and this is from one of the news agencies regarding reliability, effectiveness, affordability, etc. It got redacted to the point that all that was left was “Heightened Program Risks at Statistics Canada”.

How would you feel if one of the reports that you were putting forward was redacted to the point where there was really nothing left? Does that qualify as independence for you, or is that something that you would take back to the government and say, “I am not comfortable with this”?