First of all, it's always great to be able to talk statistics with somebody who has had first-hand experience in using and teaching. We're glad that we benefited from your efforts in the form of students. We're grateful for the capacity that's being built across this country, which I think, in itself, is another issue. Statistics seem to scare a lot of people, so it's always great when we can actually create the capacity in an ever more complex society that needs data.
As to your question regarding the 92-year rule, maybe I can provide just a bit of context. First of all, census records have in the past been made public after periods of time. That period of time has changed over time. Records have been made available. With the evolving privacy legislation that's been brought in, and an evolution of the Census Act to the Statistics Act, and so on, there was a legal question about the assurance of confidentiality and the necessity to make those records public. How were those two things going to play each other out?
The concerns were and still are really, on the one hand, that you want to make that information available for research and genealogical and other work, while on the other hand, that you don't want to put the census collection at risk because people are concerned about their confidentiality and privacy. You could see huge numbers of people not participating in the census because they feel in some way that their confidentiality would be at risk.
There have been studies across time about this very balance. For a period of time in 2006 and subsequent to that in 2011 and 2016, the notion of a provision to seek consent was put in place. I think it's important to see how quickly people's attitudes about participation in the census, and then making it public, have evolved. In the 2006 census, just over 50% of Canadians gave an explicit consent to make their information available publicly after 92 years. In 2011 and 2016, that number jumped up to over 80%, where people are explicitly giving consent to make their information available from Library and Archives Canada 92 years later.
The landscape, and the acceptance of this, is changing. On the other side, we're not seeing a massive decrease in response rates on the census. If anything, in the case of the 2016 census, we've seen a higher response rate.
I think Bill C-36 responds to that change in people's attitudes. What it proposes now, starting with 2021, is that records be automatically made available 92 years hence and for that intervening period, between 2006 and 2016, that the wishes of people would be respected. Even in that period, people can change their mind about going from a no to a yes. In fact, the overwhelming response so far—well it's not large numbers—shows that people's wishes are going from a no to a yes, even in that intervening period.