Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my hon. colleague from the NDP for raising this issue today. He knows that we will be debating this issue next Tuesday during an opposition day of the Liberal Party, but today's debate gives us some additional time to get into the matter and certainly there is a great deal to cover.
I came into politics knowing that as a Liberal my views would be the views of my party, but that they would not necessarily be shared by other parties. That is fair enough. We live in a democracy. But I certainly felt entering politics that we would do things in an intelligent way whether we had differences of opinion or not.
I have to say that earlier this summer I was really shocked by the government's decision to make changes to the long-form census and specifically to transform it from something that was compulsory, and I will get into why it is compulsory, into something that is voluntary and now called a national household survey. I found this very perplexing.
As a person with a technical background who has always felt that whatever we approach we must do it with scientific rigour and must fully understand the consequences of our actions, I was staggered at the thought that instead of having a compulsory long-form questionnaire that gathered essential data about the Canadian mosaic on a host of topics and which therefore allowed governments at all levels, non-profit organizations and various other bodies to make intelligent decisions, we would now be left with a very imprecise and potentially misleading tool. I characterized it as a stupid decision the day that I first heard about it. I do not like to use the word “stupid”, but it is, unfortunately, the word that fits on this particular occasion.
I have spent the summer on the issue of the census because the Conservative government announced this initiative in the dead of summer. The Conservatives tried to sneak it by. Who would have thought in June that the long-form census put out by Statistics Canada would be an issue throughout the summer and now into the fall, one which has riled up, inflamed passions, drawn a huge amount of criticism from a large number of respected organizations? Who would have thought that this would happen when if the government had left well enough alone, nobody would be talking about the census today? However, it is revealing of the way the government operates because it did so on a number of fronts this summer. Of course, one has to mention the joint strike fighter announcement as another example of something that was brought out in the quiet of summer. This is something that the government has a tendency to do and it bothers me greatly.
What bothers me also is the fact that the Minister of Industry, whom I consider to be an intelligent person, made the comment that Statistics Canada was evaluating a number of options. He left the impression that Statistics Canada was very much on side with the alternative that was being proposed as though absolutely no impact would occur in terms of the accuracy of this information. Of course, this put the Chief Statistician in an untenable position. He quite rightfully said that it is his duty to carry out directives from the government, and no one is quibbling with that. However, for the Minister of Industry to leave the impression that Statistics Canada acquiesced fully with the alternative that was being proposed by the Conservatives and that it would yield the same quality of reliable data in its database is, in my opinion, an extremely misleading statement. It is a statement that he continues to propound even today.
Mr. Munir Sheikh, who is a very respectable and dutiful public servant, is only one example of many people who have fallen by the wayside under the Conservative government because they dared to speak up.
We all know about Linda Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Her appointment was terminated two years early. Adrian Measner, president of the Canadian Wheat Board, was gone because he defended the board's monopoly. Pat Strogan is not having his mandate renewed. Sheridan Scott, head of the Competition Bureau, ran afoul over a brewery takeover. We know about Steve Sullivan, the first victims of crime ombudsman. His term was not renewed. The list goes on. I will not go any further into that.
I had the opportunity this summer to be on the industry committee when it held two extraordinary meetings and received witness testimony. It was very clear to me that an overwhelming number of professional organizations argued against the government's decision. One recent example is the letter that was co-signed by Ivan Felligi, an extremely respected chief statistician who built Statistics Canada into the world-leading organization that it is today, as well as two former privy councillors, Mel Capp and Alex Himmelfarb. A highly respected former governor of the Bank of Canada, David Dodge, sent a letter to the Prime Minister urging him to reconsider this decision.
There is a well-known website that publishes the names of organizations that have come out against the decision by the Minister of Industry and the Prime Minister with respect to the census. These are some of them: Alberta Health Services; Alberta Professional Planners Institute; Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services; l'Association des Retraité-e-s de l'Alliance de la Fonction publique; the Anglican Church of Canada; l'Association des statisticiens et statisticiennes du Québec; l'Association du Barreau canadien; Canadian Economics Association; l'Association des Soeurs du Canada; Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives; the Association of Ontario Health Centres.
I will get back to some more. It is just a staggering number at the moment. The list contains the names of 362 organizations that have said to the government that they do not want it to make changes because of what is going to happen to that database.
What is it that happens to that database that the Conservatives either do not understand or refuse to understand when we switch from a compulsory system, and about 95% of Canadians filled it out last time, to one that is not compulsory, now a household survey, and voluntary? If I do not want to fill it out, I can just throw it in the garbage and nothing would happen. That is the situation at the moment. As a Canadian, somebody who has worked and served in government all my life, I am going to fill that form out, but the point is that a lot of people will not. What will happen when that happens?
Statistics Canada said, and the minister is aware of this, that only about 50% of people would fill out a household survey if it was voluntary and then, if a big push was put on, and that is where the extra $30 million is coming from to try to educate Canadians, that number might be brought up to 65%. That is a far cry from the 95% that would allow it to be an accurate database.
Let us look at the one-third of Canadians who are not going to fill it out. It is the one-third of Canadians who stand to gain the greatest amount from having the census available--