In my testimony to the committee seven years ago, I said that I had two jobs, one was to give my best advice to the government, and the second was to implement whatever the government decided.
I think it's pretty obvious by now that the advice that we gave the government was to continue with the long-form census. The government said no. They wanted the national household survey. StatCan's response was, “You're the boss. We'll do whatever you want.” We tried to do our best with the survey.
It was when the minister started to blame Statistics Canada for recommending the survey and saying that the chief statistician personally gave him that advice that it became very difficult for me to continue in that job, especially since he had done it a number of times.
I did my very best to encourage him to stop, but he did not stop. I think the point came when I said, “I can't work in this situation because it leaves the impression that we gave bad advice to the government.” That was my only way to send a message that we did not give that advice.
If Bill C-36 had been part of the Statistics Act at the time—I have already dealt with that in my comments, and I have said that I don't think anything would have been different. I would still be gone, and the minister would still have said the same things. We probably would be sitting here today talking about Bill C-36, but it would not have changed anything.