Industry Committee on March 23rd, 2017

[Anil Arora]

That's what I'm saying. When you talk about something that's done inside that is now going to be done outside, which is essentially that definition, anything that is done outside does not involve the handling or access to confidential respondent data. That's the first point.

Our expertise is in collection and disseminating of information and the processing of it, so we don't build our own software if it's readily available and we're absolutely certain...and there are a lot of checks and balances in place to make sure. We have networks that have all the security that's required, so, of course, we don't duplicate things when there's a cost-effective solution out there that doesn't pose any risk to confidentiality and security.

Indeed, we buy software from various vendors, whether it's SAS or IBM SPSS, whether it's our processing hardware, whether it's the databases that we acquire to manipulate and actually process the information. With printing of questionnaires and things like that, we go out and we work with printers to make sure that's done. For distribution of questionnaires out and questionnaires back in, we use Canada Post to help us do that. Absolutely, there are activities out there where we rely on other parties to provide us with information, but never at the risk of putting Canadians' data that is private and confidential at any risk.

As I said, it starts with our deep commitment, because we understand that relationship with Canadians. It's embedded in the law—there are in fact penalties and jail terms should we violate it—and on top of that we have a very rigorous process. Before we engage in acquisition of any of those services, first and foremost we make sure that there's no risk to the confidentiality or privacy of Canadians' information.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I appreciate that, and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

That's time. We're going to move to Mr. Jowhari.

You have seven minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Arora. Thank you for coming in.

Let me start by going back to November 16 when Mr. Smith appeared before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates regarding the circumstances of his resignation.

At that time, he cited three major concerns that he had, and all of them were around Shared Services: number one was around intrusion; number two was around confidentiality; and number three, abbreviated, was around effectiveness and cost increases, etc.

Now, with you being in that position for the last four to five months, can you shed some light onto the relevance of those and whether there are points of concern?

[Anil Arora]

I took over on September 19. I think it's fair to say that there were significant opportunities to improve our relationship with Shared Services Canada in ensuring that we had the necessary capacity in the form of disk space and servers and so on for us to be able to do our job and make sure we weren't putting our ability at risk to put out information on a timely basis. We embarked on a formal arrangement, an agreement that Ron Parker, the head of Shared Services Canada, and I penned. We established a very robust governance structure between our two organizations to make sure we were going to minimize any risks associated with the lack of sufficient technical infrastructure that we needed as an agency to do our business.

We broke out the work into phases, and within those phases we broke them out into stages. We had a fairly robust planning session, very collaborative, between our two organizations to prioritize the work, to acquire the necessary hardware and software, to make sure that it was installed in a certain manner and tested and so on, as I just spoke about earlier. I'm pleased to report that we are working as planned. The risks to the inadequacy of the infrastructure that we require have significantly diminished. There's still work to do, and we continue to do that of course, but I think you can see that we're not putting our dissemination plans at any risk.

In addition to that, I just want to also clarify that in no way does Shared Services Canada tell us what we can collect or whom we can collect from. That's explicit in the agreement that we signed. They have absolutely no say whatsoever, as with any other vendor that we may work with externally or internally to the government, about how we go about doing our business. They never have, and they never will tell us how to go about doing what we know best. There is no real issue about their interference in statistical matters. As I said, we are putting more and more controls in place to ensure that this infrastructure is managed properly over time. As our programs increase, of course there's a necessity for an increased infrastructure. We want to make sure the resources are there for them to do their job and for us to make sure that we get what we need to do our job, and that we're always going to be vigilant about who has access to information about Canadians.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's great.

Is it fair for me to summarize that those three concerns that were specifically raised are not a concern for you at this point?

[Anil Arora]

As I said, infrastructure requirements continue to increase. They always will. There's no autopilot button. You have to work with parties. And we continue to work with them, and it's been very collaborative and very productive since.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

With about two and a half minutes left I'd like to go back to the role, and if you can help me understand the complementary aspects of the role of the chief statistician, the minister, as well as the Governor in Council.

[Anil Arora]

As I explained earlier, the legislation now codifies the various responsibilities in law. The government and the minister, reporting to Parliament, obviously, are accountable for the broad needs of the nation aligned to the policy needs. I think that is part of the benefit of my being able to sit at various DM policy tables, making sure that I'm certainly aware of where those needs are and where we have gaps and how those needs are evolving and how we can be part of the solution. I think that's a really important aspect: that it's not just independence, and then we go off and do whatever we want. We want to genuinely make sure we're part of the solution because Canadians deserve the best information to make decisions based on evidence.

That's the first aspect. Of course, if there are substantive changes to content in there that Statistics Canada feels are an interference in how we should go about best satisfying that content need, the legislation now gives the chief statistician the authority to ask us to please put it in writing, and it can be a public statement.

Second, there could be valid reasons in the future when a minister may intervene on methodological issues. It could be budgetary constraints, we could be going through a period of war, who knows what could occur in the future. There could be valid reasons that may have to be taken into account in the context of the proper statistical way of doing certain things. Should a government, a minister, wish to intervene, now they have to do it in a way, as laid out in law, through a Governor in Council transparent mechanism.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Great, thank you.

I have 30 seconds, so I want to make sure I get in the last point.

While it was great that the long-form census was brought back, the long-form census has not been made mandatory in the legislation. Can you explain why?

[Anil Arora]

I think what I just talked about applies to the census as well.

As I said, the questions on the census are gazetted, they're put in Governor in Council.... That's the content piece. That's encoded in law, and that's still the case in this proposed bill. The methodology and how this information can be provided is a statistical matter, so sampling, whether it's mandatory or voluntary, remains in the purview of the chief statistician with all the mechanisms that I talked about.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

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

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

Thank you, all.

I'll try to get back to the question that I was talking about earlier, and I won't spend a lot of time on that.

Could you express some of the rationale that we have between going from where all provinces and territories were represented to the situation now, where the numbers don't add up, where you still going to have that representation?

[Anil Arora]

Perhaps I could dispel a couple of misconceptions out there.

The National Statistics Council was established back in 1985 to have broad representation from various aspects of society to make sure we were getting good advice on our statistical programs. As I mentioned earlier, our system of advisory committees has evolved quite a bit since then, and we have seven committees dedicated to ensuring that we have appropriate representation of each province and territory—not one, but seven.

In addition, we have—

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

Therefore, you don't see that as a....

I do have another question, and I didn't want to lose my time again on the second round.

So you don't see a major difference. You are satisfied there's going to be provincial representation, even though we're just choosing 10. They could all be from Ontario, or they could all be from Vancouver. There's no intent with the group of 10 that it would be representative throughout the country.

Is that more or less how you see it?

[Anil Arora]

As I said, the needs of the statistical system, especially as the law is now laid out, require an ability, if you like, for a body to be able to publicly comment on how the statistical system is responsive, how it's evolving to the needs of society today, how it is placed within the international sphere, what advice is being sought and given in a transparent way, and to speak to Canadians.

That's what the Canadian statistics advisory council is about. The National Statistics Council members themselves have done yeomen's service. This is not a commentary on the quality of the people or the work they've done over the last 30-odd years, and they in fact have the opportunity to take part, or express an interest in taking part, on the new council or on the multitude of advisory committees that we have.

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

Earlier on, you mentioned that you don't build your own software. You take a look at wherever it is economically feasible but you have security in all of the data you have.

I always talk about this, but there's a difference between physical science and political science. When you state that no one is going to say there's a 100% chance that you are not going to be hacked and so on, that's where the political scientists jump in and say, well that means that this is going to take place and here's where the future is going to be.

If it did happen, how quickly could one stop such a breach? Do you have the ability to manage it, because, again, that's where the confidence part comes in that I mentioned earlier. You know, all of a sudden, you can find out.... As I said, you don't know what's going to happen in the next hundred years. Knowing somebody's religion today a hundred years from now could be extremely critical, and we've opened up the doors for that type of information to be presented.

How quickly can you ensure that you'd be able to move from one type of structure to another in order to close that gap, or would you simply shut things down until you knew you had that security?

[Anil Arora]

You're pointing out about cybersecurity threats and how things are evolving on that front. First of all, we go to great lengths to make sure that, once the confidential information comes into Statistics Canada, it's kept in isolated systems that don't have external connections and so on. It's a one-way in and that's it.

Cybersecurity threats, as you said, are a reality today. In fact, that's one of the advantages of having Shared Services Canada have the expertise, build a centre of expertise, where they're tracking those threats, finding the vulnerabilities. They're identifying what the remedies and patches are. They're building that monitoring capacity and making sure that all the systems across the government are robust.

I think that's one of the advantages, again, of doing what we do best and allowing others to specialize and help us when and if there is a perceived or real threat.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you.

We're now going to move on to Mr. Longfield. You have five minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks, Mr. Arora, for being here again.

First of all, as a full disclosure, I have an English and math degree, but I haven't done matrices or linear algebra for a few years now, so it's a good thing there's no test today.

I am interested in the advisory council and how it interacts. In particular, I am thinking of things like the labour market information. Industry is telling us that they are having trouble filling jobs, and youth are having difficulty finding jobs they can fill with their skills.

Does the advisory council look at market needs, or does it play more of an advisory role in terms of governance?

[Anil Arora]

Perhaps I could turn to.... It's not the National Statistics Council per se, but we actually have an advisory committee on labour markets and how that whole situation is continuing to evolve. That also builds on a number of previous studies.

I think Don Drummond did a study earlier, on labour market availability. It looked at the whole system, including our EI system and so on, and how it needs the kind of information to allow policy-makers to make the decisions around where there should be investments in skills and training, and where there should be more information on things such as job vacancies.

In fact, it's the work of that committee and of some of the panels that predate the current period that actually led to a couple of statistical programs being launched.

Today, we go out and look at how many jobs are advertised, how long they have been on the market, what kind of wage rates they pay, and where they are vis-à-vis where things are.

I think that's the kind of information for which we look for advice, and then we make sure, in working with ESDC and other partners, that we're responding to that.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

The Barton report, the Drummond report, or the other reports that come would go directly to you, but what's the advisory council's role in determining priorities?

[Anil Arora]

That specific council is really looking at how we go about best filling that gap. There are numerous ways that one could go about that. One could do searches on various job sites to see the number of jobs that are available. One could go out and do a survey to find out where.... It's about ensuring we have the robust mechanisms that provide the information to fill that very gap.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

It is similar to a board of directors then, in terms of their role.

[Anil Arora]

It's an advisory committee, so they give advice to me as the chief statistician and, of course, to the department, in terms of statistical methodologies, how they align with international trends and standards, and how we can collect that information so that it can better link with other sources of information, to tell the very story that we're interested in learning more about.