Our view on this is that we believe that as minister I am accountable in the House for Statistics Canada, accountable to Canadians. Our objective was to reinforce the strength and the independence. That's the objective of this bill.
With regard to operational know-how, we believe that should be the domain of the chief statistician and the experts. If there are unique cases where the minister believes he or she should get involved, we have a transparent process to deal with that through an order in council and by tabling that change in the House. We looked at the 2011 experience and realized that was what really caused this issue to emerge—where the minister was saying one thing, the chief statistician was saying another thing, and there was a lack of transparency.
We believe those measures adequately deal with any kind of intervention by a minister, because a level of accountability and transparency would be clear. I can tell you right now that our intent is clear. We want the chief statistician to focus on how the data is collected. What do we want to determine? For example, we're committed to the environment. We're committed to clean technology. If we need data on how to collect more information on clean technology, we'll determine what we need. How that's done will be determined by the chief statistician.