Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition calling for the release of census records to genealogists and historians. The petition is signed by more 2,200 Canadians from seven provinces.
The petitioners point out that an estimated 7.5 million Canadians are engaged in the pursuit of their family histories and census records are a valuable tool.
They call upon parliament to take whatever steps are necessary to retroactively amend confidentiality clauses of the Statistics Act since 1906 to allow the release of the post-1901 census records after a reasonable period of time.