Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-568, An Act to amend the Statistics Act (mandatory long-form census).
The New Democratic Party is supportive of the bill because it seeks to reverse the ideological-based decision of the Conservative government to cancel the long form census. The bill would also removes the punishment of imprisonment for a person convicted of providing false or misleading information.
While we are supportive of this bill, it is important to note that it does not go far enough.
Bill C-583, introduced by my colleague from Windsor West, goes one step further by enshrining into law the primacy of evidence-based decision-making over political maneuvering of the likes we have seen with the government.
To be clear, both elements of Bill C-568 are fully supported. For the record one more time: not a single Canadian has been imprisoned for failing to fill out the long form census. The imprisonment element should be removed right now.
However, we need to go further by removing political interference from Statistics Canada's ability to do its job and provide an accurate picture of our country. The Chief Statistician must be able to do his job in an environment free of political meddling by an ideological government intent on suppressing evidence and information that contradicts its narrow conservative agenda.
We can just imagine the outrage from the national and international community if the finance minister were to interfere with the independence of the Bank of Canada's governor to set monetary policy. Therefore, why should we accept the government's heavy-handedness in interfering with our Chief Statistician's capacity to do his or her job?
Hundreds of individuals, organizations, businesses and governments from coast to coast to coast raised the alarm bells because of the terrible decision to cancel the long form census. Despite the unsubstantiated claims by Conservative MPs about mythical complaints of the intrusiveness of the long form census, we know that the majority of citizens support and understand the need for the long form census.
As a francophone living in a predominantly English-speaking region in northern Ontario, I know that my community's capacity to access necessary federal services and funding for French cultural and educational initiatives is dependent on the availability of credible data on the size of our community in northern Ontario.
Losing the long form census will have a detrimental impact on our community and every other francophone community outside of Quebec.
Is it any wonder the government was taken to court on this issue? Our community is outraged by the government's relentless efforts to shut down any source of credible data that provides objective evidence necessary for developing good public policy.
Last night, right here on Parliament Hill, parliamentarians and members of Canada's very professional public service were invited to a special panel discussion on a timely topic: evidence versus ideology of Canadian public policy. This event was sponsored by the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, the Association of Canadian Financial Officers and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.
The event aimed to launch a public debate regarding the current state and possible future of evidence-based policy making in Canada. A panel discussion featured three distinguished speakers: Dan Gardner, Ottawa Citizen columnist and author; Lawrence Martin, The Globe and Mail columnist and author; and Armine Yalnizyan, an economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The discussion was fascinating because panellists and participants acknowledged that there has always been a role for ideology in public policy. However, they noted that in the past two years we have seen the emergence of a worrisome pattern.
First, the government gagged public servants and fired others who dared to disagree with it or gave it policy recommendations that did not fit into its ideologically driven agenda.
Second, the government has cancelled surveys and the long form census to ensure statisticians, economists, academics and other professionals did not have access to objective data that provided damning evidence of the Conservative government's policy failures.
The Conservatives are dragging this country backward with their ideological agenda even though a clear majority of Canadians are saying no. The majority of parliamentarians in this House support restoring the long form census, protecting the professional role of Canada's Chief Statistician and removing the threat of imprisonment from the act. Yet, the minority government continues to thumb its nose at the majority will of Parliament. What an insult to this historic institution. What an insult to democracy itself.
Bill C-568 is specific to the government's decision to cancel the long form census.
I believe this House needs to have a wider debate about the government's treatment of public servants. It is setting a public policy based on belief, not public interest; its rejection of evidence-based public policy; its attempt to shut down public access to objective data; and its attempt to stop credible analysis of its failed policies.
This will not work. We are on to the Conservatives and Canadians are on to them. When the next election is called, the Conservatives can be sure that we will remind them of every bad decision they have made.
This is unsubstantiated, but I have been told that the government tried to cancel the long form census when the outgoing Minister of the Environment was the industry minister, but he said no to the PMO. Unfortunately, the current Minister of Industry did not have that fortitude when the PMO came calling again demanding the cancellation of the long form census. There he was this past summer having to make a terrible decision, but he tried to blame the professional public servants of Statistics Canada.
The government keeps saying that the buck stops with the ministers, except, of course, when they make a bad decision, and then it wants to blame the public servants because it cannot defend itself.
This reminds me of when the current President of the Treasury Board was the Sea-Doo leader of the Canadian Alliance and did not know in which direction the Niagara River flowed. He blamed his staff. For the record, it flows north. The Conservatives have been blaming everybody but themselves ever since. It is a shame.
I offer my party's support for this bill and urge the House to bring other necessary changes to protect our professional public service from the kind of pervasive political interference by ministers and their political staff who have been known to interfere in every aspect of departmental decision-making, even stopping the flow of information through the Access to Information Act. We need to end this trend and we need to do it quickly before the Conservatives drag us decades backward.