moved for leave to introduce Bill C-583, An Act to amend the Statistics Act (Chief Statistician).
Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and an honour to present this act, an act to amend the Statistics Act. This would take the politics out of interfering with the chief statistician.
As members know, there has been a great controversy in Canada with regard to the census. This bill would actually provide greater scrutiny to a process to actually have a chief statistician. This bill, in particular, would require a committee of the Privy Council, the Chief Statistician of Canada, the Bank of Canada and the National Statistics Council to come together to select a chief statistician.
Second, once the chief statistician is selected, he or she will be required to do regular postings of information related to the survey and how it is used. This would restore the science behind the census and would take the politics out of it. That is a good thing for Canadians, I believe, because they believe in their census and they want to ensure that the science is what stands for the census, not ideology or other matters.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)