Thank you very much. I think I'll do a little bit of cleanup.
There were a number of different items that I wanted to speak of.
As always, there is the story of the mandatory long-form census, which comes back to the 60,000 people who were part of the Jedi religion when one of the censuses took place.
The suggestion that you're always going to get good data is not necessarily reflective of the way it is. You must have statisticians who are able to look at it and do certain tests on any information that comes in. I recognize that as a significant part of the science of statistics.
What I would like to do is put on record some of the suggestions that have come forth on potential amendments to section 4. This came from Professor Paul Thomas. We had a brief that he sent in, but I'm not sure whether he had a chance to put this on the record. I wanted to go through some of them. He proposed the following:
Section 4.1(1) should be amended to require that before a directive respecting an operational/technical matter comes into force it must be tabled in Parliament and be subject to a 60 day notice and comment period.
That's one of the suggestions he made. The second pertains to that same proposed subsection:
Section 4.1(1) should be amended to clarify that the Chief Statistician has the authority to disagree publicly should the cabinet modify the scope and content of the Census of Population in a manner that contradicts the advice of SC.
The third is on proposed subsection 4.2(1).
Section 4.2 (1) should be amended to require that any policy directive issued by the minister be placed on the cabinet agenda for potential discussion. No policy directive should amount to an indirect amendment of the Statistics Act.
Those are three amendments that have been presented. I simply wanted to put them on the record. I wonder if there are any other thoughts of amendments that one could consider as far as section 4 is concerned.
Does anyone have any comment on any those I have presented?
I realize it is difficult when it is done verbally, but are Are there any specific things that you think we could look at on section 4?
Mr. Prévost.