Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank all of the witnesses for appearing.
Every one of our witnesses has brought something very valuable to the table, but certainly not the information in terms of how Canadians see the long-form census as very important and the arbitrary dropping of question 33. I think there was enough outrage about that.
My concern, however, is with the current government's stunning lack of comprehension of the material we are gathering with the long-form census, the mandatory information. We have a minister who said that a complaint by one person in this country is all it takes to change public policy. So all I can imagine is that there was one person who complained and we've changed everything as a result. And the fact that we have another member, quite honestly, who sees this as gathering statistics for flyers...I'm actually stunned, and that I have to sit here and ask questions about something that's so fundamental....
I did want to pick up on our international obligations. We've been hearing in the news that Canada has been taking hits all around the world for policies that it's buying into. This question 33 came about because the question was specific to a UN conference on women in Beijing, where 181 member nations, including Canada, signed onto that. They signed, which indicates to me it was fairly important globally. They agreed to start to tally and value unpaid work.
Do any of you have any idea if any of the other 180 nations opted out of this “survey” in terms of trying to collect data for unpaid work?