Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before this committee. I will provide some comments on individual parts of the proposed amendments to the Statistics Act.
Let me start by saying that my overall impression of the changes is clear. The amendments constitute a significant step towards modern statistical law in close alignment with the “Recommendation of the OECD Council on Good Statistical Practice”. The council that adopted this recommendation in November 2015 consists of the representatives of our 35 member countries. It's the first OECD legal instrument on statistics, and all of our member countries, including Canada, have signed onto it. The implementation of its 12 recommendations and the associated list of good practices are regularly monitored. For me, it's a natural reference point when commenting on the proposed amendments to the Statistics Act.
The first comment I'd like to offer concerns our recommendation number 2, namely ensuring professional independence of national statistical authorities from other policy, regulatory or administrative departments and bodies, as well as from private sector operators.
I'd like to stress here that the professional independence that is sought by the recommendation relates to decisions about statistical methods and dissemination. In our view, this is perfectly consistent with some basic administrative dependence of the National Statistical Office on the executive branch in terms of defining a statistics program or more generally in terms of being responsive to the statistical needs of government and of society at large.
The amendments to the current Statistics Act explicitly confer more responsibilities on the chief statistician. They stipulate that he or she make decisions with regard to statistical methods and procedures as well as dissemination, and they add clarity concerning his or her terms of appointment. They also anchor in law the proposed statistics advisory council.
All of these measures reinforce the professional independence of the statistical authorities and are therefore very welcome in light of the OECD recommendation.
There is, however, one passage that seems to point in a different direction. The draft law in clause 4.1 states that:
Directives on any methods, procedures and operations may only be issued to the Chief Statistician by the Governor in Council, by order
What this says, which is true, is that the subsequent proposed sections impose a strict requirement to publish this order within 15 days, which represents a strong requirement for transparency. Nevertheless, interventions by the executive concerning methods, procedures, and operations remain possible by law. While there may be some sort of constitutional reasons for introducing this passage, it does appear from our perspective that this is at variance with the OECD recommendation.
Looking around the international scene, I also find that it's a somewhat unusual passage in the Statistics Law of OECD countries and appears in some respects stronger and broader in its potential application than are the provisions for ministerial intervention in statistical collections that apply in other Westminster democracies like Australia or New Zealand.
In the same vein, the unchanged provision in the law that indicates that the Governor in Council prescribes the questions to be asked in any census could be interpreted as incompatible with the professional independence of the chief statistician.
Another comment in this context relates to the selection of the chief statistician. The amendments to the law provide few indications about the process for selection, nor are any required qualifications for the position mentioned. The good statistical practices included in the OECD recommendations indicate both that the selection process should be described clearly by law and that the appointment should be based on professional competence only.
Such additions to the text may be worth considering unless there is another Canadian law that generally stipulates the need for demonstrated professional competence for this type of appointment. I'm not in a position to judge that.
Similarly, there is a bit of a question about the selection process for the members of the statistics advisory council. Again, anchoring the council, its principal functions, as well as specifics about the tenure or remuneration of its members in the Statistics Act is decidedly good practice, but there is no explicit reference to the professional qualities or profiles that council members should possess. As a key function of the council is to advise on the quality of the statistical system, explicitly stipulating the relevant professional competence would appear to be a useful thing.
Somewhat in passing, I notice that the size of the council has been set at 10. Now, while this appears to be near the lower end in international comparison, it should also be said that there is a wide variation among OECD countries here. For instance, the Irish National Statistics Board has eight members, the Swiss federal statistical commission has 11, Australia has 16, the U.K. has 14, France has about 40, and Germany has over 50. You have a wide variety of cases, and I guess much depends on the specific functions that these councils are intended to have, so there is no single good practice in this respect.
Another observation—and this is my final one—relates to our OECD recommendation number four that stipulates the protection of the privacy of data providers. The existing Canadian statistics law has very good provisions for the protection of privacy and so is fully compliant with the recommendation. My observation relates to the automatic disclosure of census records 92 years after a census is conducted. Now, we did not go through an in-depth analysis of statistical laws in OECD countries to find out about this point in other countries, but none of the laws we looked at briefly—with the exception of the United States—had a similar specific provision for general disclosure by default after a certain lapse of time. We don't consider the 92-year rule at variance with the OECD recommendation, but it is clear that there is an arbitrage between the long-term privacy protection for individuals and their families and other societal interests. Of course, that's an arbitrage decision that you as parliamentarians have to make.
I thank you for your attention and will be happy to respond to any questions you may have.