Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my colleague from Edmonton speak. Not only do I find the tone and timbre of his voice very soothing, but I always learn something, and tonight I learned a new word “progenitor”. I will have to ask him to explain to me what in fact that is, if he would be so kind, because he left me in the dust on that one.
I would like him to expand a little on the point he made that there was no perpetual guarantee of privacy ever implied to those who fill out census forms, even back in the pre-1911 period. If that was implied and if that was the understanding, which certainly is the concern that has been brought forward, would he not agree that just because a promise is old, it does not mean that it is still not binding, that just because a contract or a treaty or some kind of an agreement is ancient, that it is still binding on the parties?
I would like to know where he gets the information that there was no guarantee of privacy in perpetuity back then. We really do not know what was told to those people pre-1911. Would he agree that if that were the understanding, then it would be something that we would have an obligation to uphold, at least in this House in this modern era?