Madam Speaker, they just do not get it. There is no way that a voluntary census will give us data as usable as the mandatory one. A mandatory census is not just whether we decide to fill it out at our dining room table, it is actually whether there is an obligation for the government to follow up if people have had trouble filling it out, as the wonderful member from ITK said at committee. It is a matter of the resources to the government to help someone who does not speak English, help other people to be able to fill out this data that ends up being in their best interest.
It is irresponsible for the government to try to pretend that the voluntary census, for which it will spend $30 million more, can in any way be a replacement for the mandatory long form census as was said at committee by Munir Sheikh.