Debates of Feb. 6th, 1997

Canadian Census

[The Deputy Speaker]

I will not get into a debate with the member on that. It was the Bloc Quebecois' turn to speak. If the member wishes to consult the Table he will see that.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary North, AB]

Mr. Speaker it is a pleasure for me to speak on Motion No. 277 which has been introduced in the House by my colleague from Beaver River.

The motion reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should return the word "Canadian" among questions of ethnic origin on the Canadian census.

There has been some interesting debate on this. I was very interested to listen to the previous speaker, my colleague from the Bloc, who said it was a shame there was no discernible Canadian culture, that our culture had been fractured into hyphenated Canadianism, recognizing all kinds of hyphenated Canadians but not working to make sure we affirm and encourage Canadian unity and identity. She makes a very excellent point. We need to stop doing exactly what question 19 does, which is divide and fracture and hyphenate Canadians based on ethnicity.

The Liberals make a big thing of a pejorative word called racism. Yet here the Liberals, in a brand new question conceived and written by a Liberal government, does exactly that, differentiates Canadians on the basis of race. If that is not racism I would like to know what it is. Perhaps when the Liberals use the word "racist" and "racism" as loosely as they do, they would bear in mind that their actions do not always match their deeds.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, there has been some hot debate and some concern that Canadian is not one of the categories of ethnicity or race or background that is a choice on the census form in question 19 which is kind of interesting.

I have a very interesting and helpful letter from the chief statistician commenting on Motion No. 277. It very helpfully sets out this information. I am sure Canadians will be very interested in this information because it sheds a new light on concerns that Canadian is not one of the categories listed in question 19.

The chief statistician states: "I would like to emphasize that a person answering Canadian for question 19 would not be prosecuted". That is good news. We can be Canadians. We can identify ourselves as Canadians even on census forms and not be prosecuted. We should stand up and cheer about that. That is very reassuring to me.

The letter goes on to state: "Individuals who felt that Canadian was the most appropriate response to the question and who wrote in this answer in the space provided are considered to have complied with the requirements of the Statistics Act". This is once again affirming if you identify yourself as a Canadian in the census form you will not be prosecuted. It is very nice to have that freedom. I am sure most Canadians will feel very happy.

The letter goes on to say this. "Statistics are needed by both governments and employers to administer and assess the impact of the employment equity legislation passed by Parliament in 1986". Two interesting points come out of this letter, in addition to the relief we call feel knowing that we can in fact identify ourselves as Canadians. One is that Canadian is not an obvious and clear choice. In fact, the only way that one can identify oneself as a Canadian in question 19 is if one writes it in the blank.

Canadian is kind of an afterthought in this question. It is a fill in the blank kind of thing and not a natural and normal designation for Canadians. A person may be designated as almost anything else, but only if they really feel strongly about it and decide to fill in the blank can they really be a Canadian in that question.

The second piece of information in this letter, which I believe is accurate, is that the purpose of question 19, which asks for the ethnicity of respondents, is for the purpose of administering the employment equity legislation passed by the government.

Mr. Speaker, did you indicate I have only one minute left? Oh, I am finished.

That is a little background to support this motion. I am pleased to put that forward. I suggest this motion be passed and that Canadians be free to designate themselves as Canadians on our census forms in any manner that they choose.

[The Deputy Speaker]

On a point of order, the hon. member for Calgary North.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, a point of order. I know time flies when you are having fun, but that did not seem to have been 10 minutes. Could you consult with the Table to make sure I got all my purple prose in?

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member may well have an excellent point. We have a new technology in the House now which actually times everybody down to 10 minutes. There may have been an error in the technology but never by anyone at the Table or in the Chair. I will check that matter.

The fault is no doubt with the technology. The hon. member for Calgary North still has five minutes.

[Diane Ablonczy, Reform, Calgary North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, thank you. I know other members may have wished that the technology was correct in this case but I did have a couple of more points that might throw some light on our consideration of this motion.

I refer back to the point that the purpose of question 19 was simply and solely for the administration of the employment equity legislation. I had some very interesting feedback in my office following the circulation of the census. I am sure almost every member in the House did and that other colleagues of mine, even from other parties, would be able to give examples of this.

From my own files, a woman named Krishna called and said: "Census question number 19: East Indian would cover Punjabis. The category of Punjabi should not be there. I refuse to answer and will not send my application back to Stats Canada. This creates division between India and Punjabi and should be removed".

Esther phoned in and said: "I am livid and upset and hurt about the census forms. When I received my Canadian citizenship, the adjudicator told me that I would never again be asked what my ethnicity was or what my background was. Stats Canada already has my records. Why does it need to ask me again? I thought I was a Canadian".

Since time is short I have provided just those two short examples of some of the difficulties, the divisions and the upset that Canadians feel when they are subjected to this kind of discrimination and differentiation.

Over the past two decades, Liberal and Conservative governments have tried to achieve equality, a very laudatory goal. But they have tried to achieve equality among Canadians by passing legislation that treats different groups of Canadians differently under the law based on race and other characteristics. Reform believes this special status approach is divisive and leads to intolerance and inequality. We believe in true equality which allows diversity and promotes tolerance.

A Reform government would ensure that Canadians are protected against discrimination on the basis of equality of individuals before the law rather than on the basis of special rights based on group characteristics. A Reform government would protect all individuals from rights infringements and discriminatory actions by the state, particularly in the area of employment which the Employment Equity Act is supposed to address.

We would discontinue federal affirmative action and employment equity programs because unlike the other parties, we believe that even discrimination practised for "affirmative reasons" is harmful because it is fundamentally unjust.

Question 19 on the census form gets us more to the point where we discriminate, differentiate Canadians, the people in this country on the basis of ethnicity. We think it is wrong. We think it is harmful to Canadian society. We think it is divisive and we think it should be stopped and reversed and that Canadians should be affirmed as Canadians, treated equally, given equal opportunity before the law and move on to build their lives as individual Canadians, not as members of a special, different group based on individual characteristics.

Once again, I urge my colleagues to support the motion which again affirms the fact that we should be proud to be Canadian, encouraged to be proud Canadians and should be proud to be identified as Canadians in very way.

[Jack Frazer, Reform, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, you should visit us sometime. I think you might enjoy it. Although we had some snow over the winter, we now have daffodils poking their noses up.

I am a Canadian and what is more I am proud to be a Canadian. As a matter of fact for over 41 years I wore the word Canada on my shoulder flash in the air force.

It has been my good fortune to have travelled most of the world, usually as a private citizen, but for three years as a Canadian

diplomat. It did not matter what my status was, my Canadian passport gained me a warm welcome no matter where I went. The people I met did not care about my ethnic origin. It was the fact that I was from Canada that mattered.

During the 1996 census one in every five Canadian households was asked: "Is this person white, Chinese, South Asian, black, Arab, West Asian, Filipino, Southeast Asian, Latin American, Japanese, Korean or other?"

For the first time in our history Canadians were required to define and identify themselves by race. Many Canadians view the omission of the term Canadian in question 19 of the census as a denial of their heritage. This omission has prompted my colleague from Beaver River to introduce Motion No. 277, and I welcome this opportunity to address the important issues prompted by the motion.

It reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should return the word "Canadian" among questions of ethnic origin on the Canadian census.

Stats Canada readily acknowledges that they excluded the term Canadian from the list because including it would make it impossible for them to determine the numbers and characteristics of the visible minority population in Canada. This was the essential purpose of that question. Why must visible minorities be defined? Why do we have to segment, to separate Canadians into racial groups? Why simply, Mr. Speaker, to enable the employment equity act to be implemented.

Let us have a look at what is accomplished by employment equity. Thomas Sowell, a well respected African-American economist has written extensively on preferential hiring programs around the world and observes that preferential hiring policies invariably expand, often hurting the very people they are designed to help. They create tensions among winners and losers and are invariably associated with heavy costs because they invite large numbers of fraudulent claims from those who do not belong to a minority group but wish to obtain the advantages.

In Democracy on Trial , Jean Bethke Elshtain writes of the condescending paternalism experienced by scholarship recipient Richard Rodriguez, the son of Mexican immigrants to California. Although he had personally received an excellent parochial education he was treated as a victim of cultural deprivation. He noticed that many of his peers who were both poor and poorly educated received all sorts of allowances and were pushed ``through the system under the assumption that standards of merit and achievement are themselves unfair impositions by an anglo majority on any and all minorities''.

In Rodriguez's own words: "The conspiracy of kindness became a conspiracy of uncaring. Cruelly, callously, admissions committees agreed to overlook serious academic deficiency. I knew students in college then barely able to read, students unable to grasp the function of a sentence. I knew non-white graduate students who were bewildered by the requirement to compose a term paper and who each day were humiliated when they couldn't compete with other students in seminars.

Not surprisingly, among those students with very poor academic preparation, few complete their course of study. Many drop out blaming themselves for their failure. One fall, six non-white students I knew suffered severe mental collapse. None of the professors who had welcomed them to graduate school were around when it came time to take them to the infirmary or to the airport.

The university officials, who so diligently took note of those students in their self-serving totals of entering minority students, finally took no note of them when they left".

I can speak personally on this practice as it is applied in the Canadian Armed Forces where a conscious effort is made to achieve the correct ethnic ratio in the rank structure.

Francophone officers were often given priority on promotion lists, sometimes bypassing 10, 20, 30 or even 40 anglophone officers who had been more highly rated.

Unhappily, in the system's effort to achieve the correct ratio, some very good francophone officers' careers were curtailed. They had been advanced too quickly, spent too little time in each rank which in turn denied them the experience they would have acquired if they had followed a more normal pattern. Some wound up in positions of responsibility for which they were not adequately qualified and this caused them to fail to fulfil their duties as well as expected. The result: people who had the potential to progress much further wound up limited in their advancement because they had been pushed too fast and too hard.

Merit is the primary criterion on which selection or advancement should be based. Any interference with this principle is demeaning to the individuals to whom it is applied. It says to them: "You are not good enough to make it on your own so we will deny others to help you".

It is ironic that employment equity programs designed to create equality in fact divide and create disparities. Yet the word Canadian unites us, while recognizing and accepting our individual distinctions, heritage and ancestral roots.

As people from Quebec are proud to be Quebecois, I am proud to be a British Columbian. My roots are tied to this beautiful land: the sea, the mountains, the uniqueness of our Pacific culture and, most

of all, family. It is the place of my birth, my home as a youth, now again, by choice, my home and the place where my children and grandchildren have made their homes. It is a place of the heart.

I am a fourth generation Canadian. My ancestors were Scottish and, I suppose, if I go back far enough, French. However, I do not wish to be known or considered a Scottish-Canadian or an anglo-Canadian or any sort of a hyphenated Canadian. I reject this divisive principle and have received much input from constituents who also reject hyphenated Canadianism.

For this reason, I cannot accept the census question asking us to become hyphenated Canadians. Nor am I able to support the Bloc amendment by the member for Bellechasse, seconded by the member for Saint-Hubert, which reads:

That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the word "should" with the following: "include Canadian, Quebecer, English-Canadian, French-Canadian and Acadian among questions of ethnic origin on the Canadian census.

Section 15(1) of the charter states:

Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

Section 15(1), standing alone, affords protection of all civil rights.

Section 15(2) of the charter goes on to state:

Subsection 1 does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups, including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

Section 15(2) of the charter is equating equality with sameness. The very heart of section 15(1) has thus been stripped away. It now rings hollow.

This coming August my wife Jean and I are going to Aberdeen in Scotland to attend the 800th anniversary of the formation of the Frazer clan. At that gathering we expect to meet Frazers from many parts of the world, from Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, France, India, other countries and, of course, Scotland.

We will be joined together by our common name or connection to that name, but that will not take away the fact that we will still be Canadian, American, Scottish or whatever. Our nationality and pride in our individual countries is in no way diminished by our common name connection.

There is something drastically wrong if the Canadian census form does not allow Canadians to identify themselves as Canadian. I hope members of this House will agree and support MotionNo. 277 proposed by the member for Beaver River.

[Ian McClelland, Reform, Edmonton Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, imagine someone coming from another planet, sitting down right here in Canada and finding that they were being asked some questions on a census. People came around and the person who came from outer space to Canada was answering the questions in a census and thought "I better find out where I am".

He got an atlas that said Canada. He checked around and found a hockey team called the Montreal Canadiens. He was watching TV and saw an advertisement for a beer that was called "Canadian" and thought "Canada, hmm".

When it came time to answer the census, the person from outer space looked for the slot that said Canadian and much to that person's chagrin he could not find it.

Imagine the same person sitting down anywhere else in the world. I suppose in England, English would not be there. It would have to be something else; American would not be there.

From time to time we ordinary Canadians sometimes wonder if there is a lack of oxygen in the air in Ottawa. God knows there has to be something that causes this. What other explanation could there be for such a bone headed decision to say in Canada we will have a census form and the person cannot be a Canadian?

It does not matter whether the person has been here for a week, whether they have been a citizen of this great country for a week, a day or whether we go back 10 generations, we are Canadians. Is that not what it is all about? Is that not what being part of the mosiac, of this family from a host of different countries around the world is?

Do members suppose that people came here from Rwanda to be Rwandans forever? Do members think perhaps that our forefathers came from wherever they came from to be where they were? What do they suppose it was that brought them to this magic land Canada? It was the values we have of inclusiveness. It was that in Canada it is possible to be equal before the law, no matter their station in life, whether high born or low born.

There are situations where that is not always the case. We can speak to that tomorrow when we talk about Bob Fowler and Kyle Brown and the difference between those two people who should be equal before the law but who are not.

Generally speaking, one of the magic, marvellous things about Canada is that we are equal before the law. It does not matter what colour our skin is. We are a nation of values. What could possibly be the motivating factor? What could motivate these people at Census Canada who are known around the world for the fact that we really have a good census?

The census information that is compiled is good for the country. It gives us statistical factual information from which we can have a foundation for a whole host of different things, like how the economy is going, the number of children there are, what we should plan for, the number of schools we are going to need, the number of senior citizen retirement homes we are going to need and what happens demographically in a community in response to a particular initiative, financial or otherwise.

The census is good and the census takers are recognized around the world as being first rate. Therefore it does not seem logical for them to say "how can we screw up this census and enrage half the population?" Do we suppose they get up in the morning and say "It is just too easy. Why do we not do something to drive everybody crazy and knock our phones off the hook so that people think that we are the crazy ones, not the people in the House of Commons who represent us"?

If we scratch the surface we will find that there is a method to the madness. There is a reason. The employment equity affirmative action legislation passed by the Liberal government is not worth the powder to blow it to hell, which is where it should be blown to, unless we have the data base from which to explore and make comparisons.

I had the privilege to respond on behalf of our party to the multiculturalism report on the 25th anniversary of the new wave of multiculturalism in Canada. At that time I was proud to say that our country is one heart and many colours. That is what we are. However, when we set up a country based upon division, based upon our ancestry, then we are going directly counter to everything we have tried to do to make our nation inclusive.

We are Canadians because we share common values. Canadians understand that there are some of us who are less able to carry the load and we help them. We measure the quality of our community not by the highest but by the lowest among us; not by the most privileged but by the least privileged. These are the values that make a nation. They are fairness and equality. All people are measured equally, based on merit, and those who need help can depend on that help.

The minute we introduce into our culture the notion that people should have or be declined benefit because of their race, we are introducing sand into the foundation of our nation that we will come to regret.

It is interesting to note that the only country that has ever, to my knowledge and to the knowledge of my researchers, asked for the racial determination of persons in a census was Germany during the horror of the Nazi times. I am not suggesting for a moment that these two are equal. I am not suggesting that the motivation is the same. That would be ludicrous. We all know it is not. However, the fact remains that the racial background of people in this country is nobody's business, period. We are Canadians because we are human beings and that is where our equality comes in.

Everything we do in our country should be based on merit and the values that we share as human beings, and not for any other reason; not because of the colour of our skin, our religion, our sex or our sexual orientation. It should be based strictly on merit.

Introducing this innocuous little change has the potential to take us down further on a path that many Canadians already see as being divisive and harmful to our nation in the long run.

I would ask all hon. members to consider the fact that by putting Canada back into the census we will be helping to build and to mould an inclusive country where we do not look at each other and see the colour of each other's skin, or our sex, but that we look at each other and see who we are as human beings, sharing a common value system, a common destiny, all of us as Canadians.

[Leon Benoit, Reform, Vegreville, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking on Motion No. 277 which is sponsored by the hon. member for Beaver River. It is an important motion because it deals with an issue which was brought to my attention by many people in my constituency during the time of the last census.

The people who came to me were concerned that they were not given a choice on the long census form when they were asked about background. They were not given the chance to choose Canadian. Many of these people who contacted me, in fact all of them, were upset because Canadian is what they are and is what they consider themselves to be.

Why was Canadian not given as a choice? It has been talked about by some of the hon. members who have spoken on this issue before me. One of the reasons of course is that if that choice is given it is too difficult, you do not get accurate information for employment equity legislation. That is certainly one of the key reasons.

Employment equity legislation insists that in government agencies and agencies regulated by the federal government people be hired based on quotas. Many provinces of course have employment equity legislation as well.

Many of the people who support the idea of employment equity argue that we are not talking about quotas at all. All we are talking about is giving everybody a fair chance and a fair shot at things. Clearly some groups, in particular some visible minorities or gender or someone with a certain sexual orientation have not been given a fair chance. We only want to make that fair but we are not talking about quotas.

A young fellow, the son of a person I have come to know through Reform, came home when I was with his parents. I asked this young fellow what he was working on. He said he worked with computers. This was a job during the summer. I knew he was in university and would be going back. I asked him what kind of work he did. He said he was doing a project for the Ontario government with regard to employment equity. I said that is interesting and asked what the program is for.

He said it is to determine how many people should be hired by chartered banks. Actually the work he was doing was going to be sold to chartered banks so that the banks know how many people to hire from each group. I said: "Do you think that is right, that you would hire based on quota?" He said: "It is not about quota at all. It is just information for the banks so they can determine how many people they should hire".

After we pursued this a little the young man came to realize this is quota, and that is what we are talking about here, quota. He did acknowledge this after a bit of discussion. I found it really surprising that this young fellow had been so brainwashed by the people who were promoting this employment program he was working for never to refer to this as quota when clearly that is what is was.

What does this have to do with this motion sponsored by the hon. member for Beaver River? The connection is that the reason StatsCan is getting these numbers and is not including Canadian as one of the groups to choose is that the numbers are needed for employment equity. That is one of the reasons. It has everything to do with quotas.

When the statistics are collected and it is found out how many people there are in each of the visible minority groups, in the other categories, the different colour groups, once that information is obtained, that information is applied directly to government hiring and to hiring by agencies that are regulated by the federal government, such as banks. They will be used in the provincial employment equity programs where they are in place. That is without a doubt the most important reason these statistics are collected.

When these people came to me during the last census and after the last census that is why they were so upset. They knew the reason this information was being collected. They knew it had everything to do with employment equity, that it had everything to do with quotas. It upset these people.

Many of these people had immigrated to this country themselves from some other part of the world or their parents had emigrated from some other part of the world. They did not want to be referred to by their ethnic background. They did not want to be categorized based on ethnic background or skin colour or any other visible characteristic. They wanted to be referred to as Canadians. That is why this motion has come forth. It would give Canadians a chance again, no matter what ethnic background, what skin colour to just be Canadians.

It certainly is one reason this information is being collected. There are other possibilities. One of course is to determine how much funding should go to different multicultural groups, multicultural spending. Polls have shown and certainly people who talk to other people in large numbers would know that Canadians do not accept spending taxpayers' money on promoting certain cultures. The general principle that people believe should guide spending on culture is that the money should come from the people who are interested in preserving that culture.

Certain groups have done this extremely well. They have protected their culture. They have promoted their culture. They have put their culture to others in the neighbourhood in a way that has fascinated people. It has not caused resentment because they know it is not taxpayers' money that is doing this.

One group I can think of is the Ukrainian group. In my constituency there is a large group of people who emigrated or their parents emigrated from Ukraine. Long before multicultural grants were available they did a super job through the church and through work in the community of keeping their culture for themselves, for their children and for the interest of others in the community. Because people knew that they were doing it with their own money, there certainly was not any resentment.

Now that there are multiculturalism programs a resentment has built toward the people from visible minority groups themselves who are funded with taxpayers' money, who are promoting their culture with the use of taxpayers' money. That is what causes the resentment.

There are some other possible reasons for wanting these numbers. I wonder. Leading up to the last election the Liberal Party chose women candidates, it just chose them. The Liberals did not allow the proper nomination process to take place because there were not enough women to become members of Parliament who were going to be running for the Liberals.

I am wondering if part of the intent of getting these numbers is that the Liberals are now going to appoint candidates for the next election based on the numbers obtained in the census. I say that kind of tongue in cheek but I am not so sure it would not happen. Let us all hope it would not. Let us let the best person for the job get the job.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Beaver River who will no doubt be speaking only to the amendment.

[Deborah Grey, Reform, Beaver River, AB]

Yes, Mr. Speaker. As you know Motion No. M-277 is my motion. I spoke earlier in the debate on November 26, 1996 when my colleague from the Bloc, the member for Bellechasse, brought forward the amendment.

If we could look at a snapshot of what is wrong with this country, it is somebody from a group who is going to add to the list rather than make the list smaller. That probably sums up so clearly the main reason I brought this motion forward in the first place. We need to be recognized as Canadians and Canadians period. Yet here is somebody in the Chamber who wants to make the list longer rather than shorter.

I know it has been quoted here several times today by my colleagues who have spoken on this but let me in disbelief read one more time what the actual amendment states:

That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the word "should" with the following:

"include "Canadian", "Quebecker", "English-Canadian", "French-Canadian" and "Acadian" among the questions of ethnic origin on the Canadian Census."

This is not derogatory toward any of these groups. Every one of these groups is to be celebrated. In Beaver River I have an enormous francophone population and we celebrate that. It truly is a multicultural microcosm of this country. Not only do we have a huge francophone population, the second largest in Alberta, but we have an enormous Lebanese community up in the Lac La Biche area. There were fur traders there in the twenties. We have a large German population, a large Ukrainian population and on and on it goes.

There is one common denominator of those people in Beaver River. They would jump to their feet in a moment if they could be here today, if we could transport them, to say: "I am a Canadian, you bet". It is as simple as that. They would say: "I am a Canadian period". And they would leave off all this nonsense after all these commas.

I had a number of calls in my constituency office and here in Ottawa from people who were among the unlucky one out of five to fill out the long census form. It upset me more than anything that I got a short one. I was just waiting. When my husband phoned me from home to tell me we got our census form, I asked him to rip it open to find out if it was the short one or the long one. Mr. Speaker, you know Lew and you know he was just as anxious as I was to get the long form and he was pretty upset. I think he was ready to drive around the countryside to find a neighbour he could swap with, but it did not happen and we had to fill out the short one.

It is for this very reason that Lew, who just happens to be my husband and I think the greatest guy in the world, as a regular Canadian said: "Let me get my hands on this so I can tell this government exactly what I think about this kind of list making and categorization of people as if we were just a bunch of so many pigeons".

It is wrong. Mr. Speaker, you know it is wrong and I think many people in this Chamber feel it is wrong. I know how important it is for the people my colleagues have alluded to this afternoon to say wait a minute here, there is something wrong because there is an underlying motive, which is wrong, for asking these questions. That of course is: "We will attempt some social engineering. We know what is best for you".

The census people from Stats Canada did not dream up these questions. They were told, they were ordered, they were commanded by the people who are obsessed with employment equity and government grant giving because they think that will help unify the country. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am so sad that some colleagues across the way did not even stand up on behalf of this motion today.

When are we going to stand up in this Chamber and say: "I am a Canadian and I am proud to be a Canadian"? When am I going to be able to count on folks on the other side of the House who may disagree with me politically on all kinds of things, which I respect, but for goodness sake, it took us a year and a half to sing "O Canada" in this place after I tabled a motion on that. Is it too radical to sing our national anthem in the national Parliament? Is it going to be too much to ask people to say: "Let us say we are Canadians on the census"? I could understand it from the Bloc Quebecois. But for the life of me I cannot understand it from people on the other side of the House who are proud and passionate Canadians. We should be able to say "I am a Canadian" on question 19. By jingles, the next time that census comes around, I will put Canadian no matter what, because that it what should make us proud.

Let me just close by asking the Speaker to put the question now on the amendment by the Bloc Quebecois.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The time for debate has expired. If the hon. member wishes to speak further on the amendment the next time, she will have four and a half minutes to do so.

[Deborah Grey, Reform, Beaver River, AB]

I know the time has expired. I am asking you to put the question now on the amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The time for adjournment has passed, so there would have to be unanimous agreement from all members in the House to put the question on the amendment.

Is there unanimous agreement to put the question on the amendment?

[An hon. member]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I hear a no. Therefore, the debate will continue the next time.

Dear colleagues, the hour provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.

It being 6.41 p.m., the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m.

(The House adjourned at 6.41 p.m.)