Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In my first round I will limit my questions to Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith, I have three questions. We have only five minutes, so I'll just ask all three. You can choose to answer one or all three.
You mentioned a formal protection in law of the statistics office. I would like you to elaborate on that, if possible.
You also mentioned the lack of willingness by households to participate in the surveys you conduct is a matter of concern. What are you doing to mitigate that?
My major concern is the different numbers I get from different agencies. For example, the number from the University of Ottawa for high-tech employment in Ottawa is 68,000. From Statistics Canada, it's 42,000. That's a big difference. While I can understand the difference may be in how you define “high-tech sector”, even then the difference is huge.
Looking at only Statistics Canada numbers for Ottawa, in 2014 your number was 64,000, and it crashed in 2015 to 40,000. That is a significant difference, which we know is not at the street level. From the University of Ottawa the number has been quite constant and slightly increasing during the last several years.
Why is there that difference?