Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all our witnesses for being here and for your very important testimony.
Mr. Niemi, perhaps I can start with you. I want to talk a bit about race-based data collection. You recently said that race-based data collection is instrumental to any campaign or any struggle to combat racial profiling in policing. We know that can be extremely helpful for improving any public accountability and for informing public policies.
As you may know, over the summer the government announced that Statistics Canada will now begin to collect data on race for victims of crime and people accused of crime. Perhaps you can touch a bit more on why that is so significant and talk a bit about anything we need to take into consideration when collecting that data and how that data will be used, because there are certainly concerns about privacy and about seeing that the data doesn't tarnish a community or reinforce any racist stereotypes.
If you can shed some light on how we balance that, it would be extremely helpful for the committee.