Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my third Conservative colleague for asking a question. It is interesting that the government voted for extended hours, but it seems to be only the Conservative Party that has been having the debate here.
The member's question is a very good one. If we did make it voluntary, it would in fact affect the randomness of the sampling. It could be addressed certainly in the way he suggested, which is by keeping the type of information that is released to tombstone information.
There also needs to be more thought put into the types of questions we are actually asking. My other colleague from Dufferin made a very good point. It could be argued that the government or a government agency actually should not be asking these questions in the first place. The types of questions that are being asked should be looked at. Certainly those things which are of a very sensitive nature should be separated from tombstone information to keep the randomness there.
I should clarify that this is not the debate within Bill S-18 but it is certainly a related debate. Probably in distinction of my colleague, I would say that if a citizen feels so strongly that he or she does not wish to divulge information in the long form to the Government of Canada and simply wishes to fill out the short form, which would be more basic information, I would probably side with that citizen having the right to say, “I do not wish to fill out the long form. I would rather fill out the short form”, just as a matter of first principles.