Mr. Speaker, with any significant change in a policy such as this, it would be normal to consult the advisory council that is appointed for that. It would be normal to consult the end users.
What was shocking in what has turned up over the last while is this was a totally ideological fight against having good data. It is something the Prime Minister and Guy Giorno have been involved in since last Christmas. They have been bullying the staff at Statistics Canada. The Prime Minister's handwriting is on the documents themselves. This is an ongoing fight. This occurred during the G8 and G20 summits when Parliament was not sitting. The thinking was that no one would notice. According to the Globe and Mail:
Don Drummond, a member of Statistics Canada’s advisory council, said “all of us were shocked” by the news that the mandatory long-form census was being abandoned.
...the council unanimously believed that abandoning the mandatory long-form census would skew the 2011 results, causing a statistical break with previous surveys that would it make impossible to read and project trends accurately.