Mr. Speaker, on behalf of Mary Mercier and 16,000 other Canadians, I am protesting the use of the FAMEX survey by Statistics Canada. The intrusive content and threatening manner of the survey is objectionable to Canadians and violates our fundamental sense of fairness of what governments should do.
This survey certainly is unaccountable bureaucracy gone wrong. Such detailed information about one's personal income tax form, how much they spend on toilet paper in a whole year or how much interest they accumulate on their credit cards per year is of no business to a government collector.
Governments should not be threatening people with legal penalties for non co-operation to fill out a three hour long survey when the private sector can collect for itself what it needs from volunteers and then pay them for it.
Criminal legal sanctions of government should not be used to enable private market economy work.
I call on the minister responsible, if indeed there is one at this point, to ensure that Statistics Canada stop this objectionable survey which violates mainstream Canadian values.