Madam Speaker, I too would like to commend the member for Beaver River for bringing this motion forward. In particular, I would like to thank that member for allowing me the opportunity to speak to the motion.
We are in an age where government seems to be intruding into so many areas of our lives. I can name a number of bills recently introduced in the House that do exactly that. One has to ask the question why. For example, think about the Canadian Wheat Board and its impact on many farmers in the country, especially western farmers, in how they sell their product. Some desire to sell their own grain but cannot do so because of the restrictions placed on them by the government.
I look at the gun control bill and see again a very intrusive feature. Some sections in the gun control legislation impact directly on law-abiding people. I do not think that is acceptable to the majority of people in the country.
Some of the more recent broadcasting legislation impinges on those who have businesses in that area. We see control on what can be broadcast, what can be sent out over the airwaves and what cannot. That is not to say that there should not be some legislation or restriction, but here we have restrictions that are going much deeper than what should be.
Coming up to the census, Statistics Canada, under the Department of Industry, claimed that the purpose of the question, in particular question No. 19 on the long form, was to organize population by selected ethnic origins. Those are the reasons it gave for collecting this data. This, irrespective of the politically correct spin bureaucrats and social engineers attempt to put on it, is nothing more than the labelling of people on the basis of race. Most people just want to be called Canadians.
I look at my own riding. I live in a very multicultural riding. I have neighbours who are from India, Jamaica and the Middle East. For the most part, they would like to be considered as Canadians. They came to Canada just for that reason. They do not come here to be hyphenated Canadians, which is what is the official multicultural policy of this Liberal government, which unfortunately was introduced some time back into the House and imposed on the people.
I refer to a statement made by Bruce Petrie, the StatsCan official overseeing the census. He said that question 19 was changed on the 1996 census from other past censuses "because too many minorities born in Canada were listing themselves as Canadian". This upset Mr. Petrie. One would have to ask: Why would this upset Mr. Petrie? I might point out that this quote came from the Fredericton Daily Gleaner newspaper of May 13.
Mr. Petrie goes on to say: "So someone who is black and speaks English and was born in Canada puts Canadian- That gives us no information to estimate the number of black visible minority people. We are not trying to measure race per se. We are purely and simply trying to enumerate visible minorities under existing federal legislation".
Again one would have to ask why. Why would the government want to enumerate visible minorities under the existing legislation? There is no question that it is a divisive form of regulation.
Let us go a little bit deeper. I have had the opportunity to speak to RCMP officials. In fact in the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs this point was brought up. They want to have a quota system on the different visible minority groups in the country. The only way they can do that is to determine the number or percentages of those different visible minorities through the census.
The whole point is being missed if we engineer, for instance, a police force, selecting those according to their race as opposed to choosing the best there is regardless of race.
Canadians know and feel that this is a form of social engineering, and they do not care to hear that kind of spin. Mr. Petrie would certainly fall into that category because it is people such as himself who really drive this kind of a policy, with the blessings of the government, in particular the Liberal government.
Putting a hyphen before Canadian, so people become French-Canadian, Turkish-Canadian, Greek-Canadian, Somali-Canadian, Israeli-Canadian, Hungarian-Canadian or whatever, has to be the most divisive aspect of Canadian society. It puts us all into little boxes and categories. I suggest this undoubtedly is the purpose of the census information. It is going to be used for that very reason.
I am going to speak again of my own riding, a very multicultural riding. I see evidence there of this form of blocking of the community by race or background. That does not enhance unity, nor does it benefit those who come here from different ethnic backgrounds or countries.
Canadians are painfully aware that Liberal politicians use the information gathered from question No. 19 on the Canadian census to appease minority groups to attract votes, so it has another purpose. Vote buying.