Industry Committee on April 4th, 2017

[Ron Parker]

That's a very fair statement, Mr. Chair.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

Going back, I want to compare August, 2016 to now. Under the two different leaderships, has there been any change in terms of the statement that was just made regarding the independence of Statistics Canada?

[Ron Parker]

There has been no change in the conditions around which we operate with Statistics Canada.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay, it's fair to say that your relationship with Stats Canada under the two leaderships has not changed. Is it fair to say that the independence has been maintained?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, I would say the criteria around the services we provide to Statistics Canada have not changed since September 19.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. I have two minutes.

Going back again to the concerns around security and external access by anybody aside from Statistics Canada, what steps are in place to ensure that the data that's in the infrastructure—the databases—as well as the reports that are in the process of being developed, the data and the analysis, are protected internally from other departments or externally from any type of cyber-attack?

How do you partner with Statistics Canada to ensure that?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, I'm going to ask Mr. Thuppal to address that question.

[Raj Thuppal]

Thank you, Ron.

In terms of external access, the StatsCan network is well protected behind firewalls. People from outside who are trying to access StatsCan have to breach the firewall. We do have protective mechanisms and detective mechanisms. Also, there is a layer of defence that we have employed for StatsCan wherein the servers that hold the particular information are not exposed to these firewalls, so there are multiple layers of defence before somebody can access the servers. That takes care of the external entities.

From the internal entity side, as our president has mentioned, we have people who are cleared to the secret level. We have taken an oath as per the Stats Canada act, and we have additional technical controls through the systems in place for identity management to ensure access controls for individuals who need access. Then if they do breach the protocols, there are some detection mechanisms in place so that we can take action.

In terms of the other departments, again, StatsCan has firewalls and layers of defence in place so that other departmental networks can't easily access the StatsCan environment.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That [Inaudible] the security, as well.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Masse, you have the final two minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With regard to decision-making on prioritization, this is one of the things I'd like to figure out in different departments. Currently how does Shared Services allocate its resources in making decisions in response to multiple significant requests coming in? How do you decide which ones to prioritize? Are you meeting all information requests right now and uses of service, or is there a matrix that you use to determine what is a priority and what is not?

[Ron Parker]

Mr. Chair, this area is evolving. Under the leadership of the Secretary of the Treasury Board, we've established a deputies committee to undertake enterprise planning and prioritization, starting with the collection of all the anticipated business requirements across the whole Government of Canada. That's in its initial phases of collecting the data and beginning that exercise to look at what the year ahead is going to bring. It's an important observation. We need to bring this. It was one of the issues, as you mentioned, that wasn't properly addressed in the establishment of Shared Services Canada. We need to have a demand prioritization exercise and mechanism.

Shared Services currently allows all business requests to come in, and we process those largely as they arrive, unless there is a special flag on them and then we will work with the departments and the overall Government of Canada system to decide the priorities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

With that we come to the end of the first round. Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing today. It was very informative.

We're going to take a quick one-minute break while we change panels. Let's keep it very brief, please, because we are tight on time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're back. We're going on to round two.

I'd like to welcome Mr. Wayne Smith and Mr. Ivan Fellegi, former chief statisticians of Canada.

Mr. Smith, you have up to 10 minutes.

[Wayne Smith, Former Chief Statistician of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank you for this opportunity to address the committee as it studies Bill C-36, a bill that seeks to establish the professional independence of Statistics Canada in law. Ivan Fellegi and I have played a significant role internationally in the articulation of the need for professional independence of national statistical offices. I think Dr. Fellegi is going to speak to this a bit. He participated in the writing of the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and their adoption by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, while I, as chair of the Conference of European Statisticians, helped to obtain their approval at the UN General Assembly. As a member and vice-chair of the executive of the Committee on Statistics and Statistical Policy of the OECD, I proposed and helped develop the OECD's recommendations on good statistical practice, which were ultimately adopted by the OECD council of ministers.

A key notion behind both of these documents is that the professional independence of national statistical offices should be protected in national statistical legislation. It has always been somewhat ironic that while Canada played such an important role in developing this notion, Canadian legislation has been among the worst in the developed world in terms of affording protection to Statistics Canada's independence. In Canada, professional independence, until recently—until now if this bill is adopted—has been a matter of convention rather than law, and has relied on the good graces of successive governments, and the determination of successive chief statisticians to protect that independence. While independence has been generally maintained, preserving it is not a game for weak-willed chief statisticians.

This requirement for professional independence is rooted in the need to protect the credibility of national statistics that, in the democratic process, provide a report card to the nation on the performance of successive governments and a reliable information base for public policy debate. If the national statistical system is subject to political or other external interference, credibility is eroded, and debate becomes about the statistics themselves, rather than the substantive issues of public policy. If the system of national statistics is credible, then one can truly say that a person is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.

So it's gratifying to see Bill C-36 brought before Parliament. I had the opportunity to contribute to the building of the legislation prior to my resignation.

I'd like to say at the outset that while I consider the legislation to have three major flaws, even if it's passed in its current state, the legislation would materially improve the independence of Statistics Canada and should be welcomed. But there are flaws.

The first flaw is that the legislation does not include provisions for a merit-based, transparent selection process for the chief statistician, one that would engage a selection committee of stakeholders in the statistical system in that process.

The government has argued that it now has a general merit-based selection system for Governor in Council appointments, but this system is not transparent and not binding on the current government, let alone future governments. This point was demonstrated when my successor was selected through a completely opaque process and was appointed to a lower level deputy minister position without adequate public explanation. The chief statistician of the moment is very beholden to the government and on a very short leash. This demonstrates how independence can be undermined by the selection process.

The second flaw is that Bill C-36 will in no way alter the provisions of the Statistics Act with respect to the census of population. This means that there will be no guarantee that every five years a comprehensive census will be conducted that is mandatory in all respects. The decision of the previous government to make the long form of the census of population voluntary was the principle reason for wanting to reinforce the professional independence of Statistics Canada, so it is surprising that the bill does not address the issue.

Even if Bill C-36 is passed, the cabinet is still required and authorized to approve the questions for each census, and can decide to reduce the content to any number of questions it desires. Under existing case law, the interpretation of the Statistics Act is that the long form is not part of the census proper, and therefore can be conducted on a voluntary basis, and this problem has not been addressed.

Through deft manipulation of the provisions of the amended act, any future government will still be able, once again, to make the long-form census voluntary without going before Parliament.

The third flaw is the one that led to my resignation in September 2016. Bill C-36 does not address the serious intrusion on Statistics Canada's independence arising from its new forced dependence on Shared Services Canada for informatic hardware infrastructure. This dependence, created under the previous government, gives an outside organization the ability to interfere with or even prevent, through malice, incompetence or disinterest, the delivery of Statistics Canada's programs.

We are living a case in point at this very moment. Statistics Canada has been working for some time now to modernize its data dissemination systems, which rely on now obsolete software. Statistics Canada has done its part. It has developed modern programs to replace these systems, but requires new hardware infrastructure to introduce them. Shared Services Canada has repeatedly failed to deliver the required, operationally-ready infrastructure to allow Statistics Canada to implement the new systems. The first date that was missed was in May 2015, and the structure still isn't there. The 2016 census of population program, which intended to make use of the new software platform, was forced to retreat and incur some non-negligible costs to patch up the old programs. Commitments made to the previous government to improve the usability of online census data could therefore not be honoured. More significantly, over two weeks ago—actually at the time of the release of the last labour force survey dated early in March—significant portions of Statistics Canada website were taken offline due to security vulnerabilities in the old software, which is still in use, contrary to Statistics Canada's desires, intentions, and plans. Major components of the website are still not available today. To my knowledge, this is the worst outage of online data access in Statistics Canada's history and a serious loss of access to data for Canadians. It shows why Statistics Canada must have full management control over its informatics operations.

It is my sincere hope that this committee will bring forward amendments to address these flaws in Bill C-36 when it is returned to the House.

With that, I will end my comments. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We are going to move to Mr. Fellegi. Thank you.

[Dr. Ivan Fellegi, Former Chief Statistician of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It is a double personal pleasure to appear before your committee to discuss proposed changes to the Statistics Act. After a period of formal association with Statistics Canada extending fully over 60 years, 23 as chief statistician of Canada and another nine as chief statistician of Canada emeritus, I am very happy to welcome this major step forward.

Second, as Mr. Smith mentioned, I was one of the authors of the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. It is very gratifying to see several of its principles incorporated into the new Statistics Act.

You will notice, incidentally, that my comments overlap Mr. Smith's, but we haven't collaborated, let alone colluded.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Dr. Ivan Fellegi]

It's just a similar analysis that we have carried out.

While I celebrate the improvements, I think it would be a great loss if a once-in-a-generation opportunity like the present one were not exploited to bring in a truly model Statistics Act. I would like to recommend for your consideration six possible improvements. I'm less modest than Mr. Smith. He only had three.

First, I would suggest that you give careful consideration to the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. It has a very important preamble that sets out the reasons why trust in official statistics is crucial for the sound functioning of democratic processes and why the professional independence of the national statistical office is a critical element of this trust. It would set a context for the act and could play a major role in guiding its interpretation by the courts and by others.

Second, I think the proposed method of appointment of the chief statistician leaves a lot to be desired. Here I'm fully echoing what Mr. Smith said. This is a position requiring a deep knowledge of the quality issues of official statistics and what makes them trustworthy, an understanding of the multiplicity of information needs of governments and society, and a demonstrated ability to manage a complex, multidisciplinary organization.

I strongly urge you, in case of a vacancy, to consider requiring the establishment of a search committee of eminent and knowledgeable people for the purpose of searching for and putting forward to the Prime Minister a short list of qualified persons. Such a search committee could be composed of retired governors of the Bank of Canada, retired clerks of the Privy Council, retired chief statisticians, the president of the Statistical Society of Canada, and so on. The search committee should be required to not only review applications for the position but to also conduct an active search. This is a highly specialized position, and I am asserting, based on my long experience, that an essentially passive application process without an active search component will often not work well, and has not worked well in the past.

Still on the appointment process, I welcome the establishment of term appointments to be served during good behaviour and the fact that the term is renewable, but suggest that you consider more than just renewal. Perhaps after one renewal...subject to a review by a search committee. If you have an outstanding person in the job, why should you preclude at least the possibility of reappointment?

Four, as I mentioned before, giving the chief statistician control over the statistical methods to be used and over the timing and methods of dissemination is at the heart of the proposed changes. It is, however, a major flaw, in my view, that Bill C-36 leaves open the possibility of the chief statistician being overruled, on a methodological issue, by the responsible minister. I would underline “on a methodological issue”. The proposed safeguard of transparency would not have worked in the case of the 2011 census.

This aspect of the proposed Statistics Act also explicitly violates the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, of which the Government of Canada is a foremost signatory. As I mentioned, it leaves the door wide open for the repeat of the 2011 voluntary long-form census by calling the long form a “survey”, and overruling the chief statistician on its mandatory character.

I left five copies of those fundamental principles with your clerk.

Fifth, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the scope of the census is not specified, and this leaves the door even more widely open for a future government to opt for a short-form census, with perhaps a voluntary long form that would be called a survey.

Sixth and finally, and perhaps less importantly, I suggest that you specify some skill requirements for the members of the proposed Canadian statistics advisory committee. I also suggest that you increase its size. It needs to represent a variety of disciplines, skill sets, client groups, and geographical locations.

I thank you for your attention, and I'll be very happy to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We're going to jump right into questioning. Just be bear in mind that we are behind, so we won't get through the entire round of questions.

We're going to jump right to Mr. Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thank you both for being here and providing some balance to our discussions today.

I'm going to be sharing my time with Mr. MacKinnon at the end, but I just have a quick question for Mr. Smith.

In the last testimony, we were hearing about the review and the number of meetings between Shared Services and the chief statistician. How did that go during your tenure? How frequently were you meeting with Shared Services and working on the new approaches with them?

[Wayne Smith]

There were numerous meetings, some of which I was involved in, and far more extensive meetings with my staff and the staff with Shared Services Canada. There was ongoing discussion and consultation.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay, thank you.

I'll turn it over to Mr. MacKinnon.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Longfield.

I'm glad to be here today.

Mr. Fellegi and Mr. Smith, I think Statistics Canada is a leader in the statistics community, and the two of you have helped build that reputation.

I want to thank you both for your service to the agency and to Canada.

I am concerned, Mr. Smith. You dealt a lot with—can we call them—IT issues. Do you consider yourself an IT expert?

[Wayne Smith]

Mr. Chair, I consider myself to be very knowledgeable in the area of IT. I'm certainly not an IT expert. I employ people to do that for me.