Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Motion No. 160, which reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take all necessary steps to release the 1911 census records once they have been deposited in the National Archives in 2003.
I appreciate the intent of this motion. I have received many letters of concern from genealogists in my constituency and from around the country over the issue of releasing information.
My understanding is that Sir Wilfrid Laurier passed the first law citing the issue of confidentiality in the early 1900s. The information in the census of 1911 was collected from Canadians with the understanding that the material would not be released. Subsequent laws have reinforced the confidentiality of all data collected by Statistics Canada.
The information gathered in these surveys provides an important resource for the basis of policy and program creation, as we all know. However, people do not give out their personal information lightly. I have received many calls and letters over time from people in Dartmouth who have been contacted by Statistics Canada for various surveys, such as the census survey that we are required to complete every five years, and people are not happy about this. They have a pre-eminent concern about confidentiality.
I come from a part of the country where geneology, memories and our roots are extremely important and where our family heritage is a resource for which people are fiercely proud. Amateur genealogists are researchers and storytellers and they have a determination to find out where they came from and a determination to use every possible resource to do so. We in the NDP take their concerns very seriously.
When we first learned about the cries from historians and genealogists, the previous NDP industry critic, Chris Axworthy, wrote to the Minister of Industry asking that he make a decision about releasing this information to the National Archives after 92 years, which had been the standard.
The feeling of the NDP caucus was that the issue demanded a balance be struck between confidentiality and reasonable access. However, the need to restrict access by Canadians to the post-1901 census records was highly questionable, particularly when there is much greater availability of census materials in the U.S.
The Minister of Industry deferred to the chief statistician who pointed out that he could not legally release the data to anyone. Since then the federal privacy commissioner, Bruce Phillips, announced his strong opposition to releasing the data by saying:
People who give information to the government under penalty of law on an unqualified promise of confidentiality are entitled to expect that that trust will be honoured.
Mr. Phillips also speaks of the right of Canadians to have control over their own information rather than “people with a vested interest” using and making decisions about that information. In these days of limited privacy and control of our own information, his point is well taken. The passions and implications for public policy surrounding this are fierce.
As the culture critic for the New Democrats, I am aware that one of the major uses of our public archives has been for genealogical research and that this community feels that the denial of access to the 1911 census information makes their search for roots much more difficult.
In response to the concerns of the privacy commissioner and to calls from historians and amateur genealogists, the Minister of Industry has now appointed an expert panel on access to historical census records.
I believe that a respectful course of action at this point is to wait for that panel's report and see if some kind of balance, which I believe can be achieved, will be found to let Canadians find their roots and allow us assurances of privacy.