Madam Speaker, I thank all hon. members for speaking to the bill. I also thank the Speaker for his excellent ruling that the bill does not require a royal recommendation and therefore we hope to be voting on it and getting it to committee as quickly as possible so that we can get this bill into law.
The bill speaks to the government's failure in two ways. What it is doing is harmful and unthinkable. How it has done it is the absolute worst of what we are seeing in the government in terms of its undemocratic approach and its approach to the citizens of this country.
It is the ultimate, top-down, misguided, father-knows-best paternalism that we have seen since coming to this place. This seems to have been on the bucket list of the Prime Minister, who does not want to measure things, does not want to know where there is inequality, does not want to have to remedy things that are wrong, because in some ways that is just what the census is. It is a report card on how we are doing in our country and how we are dealing with inequalities in our country.
The members opposite show audacity trying to prove that it does not really matter and that this is an issue of privacy. I would think the former Chief Statistician would be appalled that the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar would be using his name and a quote from him to defend something that he is so vehemently opposed to. It is a disgrace. She is switching the words about privacy in a way that is dishonest and misleading to Canadians.
The thing about the census is that it is anonymous data. If people do not want the government to know what religion they are, the government will not know what religion they are after they have filled out the census. It is the continued use of the words “intrusive” and “coercive” that have been so destructive. As we learned this morning in the access to information, because of this ongoing litany of “coercive” and “intrusive” from the minister and the members opposite, there is serious concern, and there was serious concern expressed last year, that this ongoing disrespect for the need for a mandatory census will actually do a disservice to the short form census and even that will end up having less accurate data.
As was said this morning by The Canadian Press:
One of the key worries was that people might think that the basic census form, which asks Canadians where they live, their ages, sexes and the language they speak, was also voluntary.
“Many Canadians may interpret the voluntary long form as applying as well to the mandatory short form,” reads the briefing note, released under the Access to Information Act.
“This would, in Statistics Canada's view, create an unacceptable risk to the credibility of the population count derived from the short-form census.”
If fewer people fill out the short form, the statistics agency warned it would affect federal transfers to the provinces and the distribution of Commons seats
That is what the government seems to be trying to confuse us with in terms that even Bill C-12 would not work without a proper response to the census, and it is time that it brought Bill C-12 back to the House as well.
The article goes on to say that the number of Canadians filling out the forms potentially could decrease by as much as 40%.
The word “mandatory” also places an obligation on the government to follow up. I think the most poignant testimony we had at the industry committee this summer was from ITK's Elisapee Sheutiapik, who said there was an amazing partnership that had developed in the Arctic communities, and about how, even though they are a community intimidated by forms, particularly because some of the elders do not speak English, that having someone who has been trained through Stats Canada going house to house, they are very comfortable having that person come and help fill out those forms, and they want to Canadians to know that there is an average of 16 people living in that house and that is unacceptable.
So as we go forward, it is a matter of saying that the government has refused to honour the opposition day motion. We hope that it will, for once, as the Prime Minister said so many times before, honour the will of the House and do the right thing, enshrine it in the Statistics Act and get on with the 2011 census that we all need.