Well, I think the most obvious answer is that there has been advocacy, I believe, going on within Statistics Canada to try to get rid of question 33. I think that's a very direct link. After having heard the testimony that was given two days ago in this committee, I went back and reread the “2011 Census Content Consultation Report”, in which they report on their consultation process. Footnote 10, which says, “During most in-person consultations, participants were asked about the use and importance of unpaid work data”, took on an entirely new meaning for me.
This was not done in any of the discussions pertaining to any of the other questions that were on the “to be reviewed” list. Unpaid work was never on the list to be reviewed, according to the consultation guide.
The other peculiar thing that happened is that Statistics Canada itself became a major contributor to the comments that were collected and were then relied upon by Statistics Canada in concluding that the unpaid work question should come out, although it did not fully say that in its consultation report. In fact, the combination of the federal government responses and the Statistics Canada responses to the question that was asked by Statistics Canada people interviewing their consultants about unpaid work were enough to clearly constitute the 30% who said to take it out.
So there's advocacy on both sides. Women have been trusting Statistics Canada to not particularly single out the unpaid work question, but I think there's evidence in the consultation report that, unfortunately, Statistics Canada has perhaps not been quite so above board.