Mr. Speaker, I must confess that I never imagined I would be standing in the House of Commons today addressing a motion about saving the census. When I was elected, I never thought that I would be coming here to try to salvage something we have assumed is an institution of value, of merit, of interest, of high acclaim around the world because the government has decided that people have become afraid of census data or census takers.
I have had no experience whatsoever in my entire life of hearing about anyone being afraid of the census. The census is something that may annoy people from time to time. People may resent having to take an hour every five years to fill it out, but I have never had anyone in any of my churches as a minister, in community life as a neighbour, or in my work life as a member of Parliament, say to me that he or she was seriously troubled by the census. It is therefore somewhat of a surprise that we are standing here today trying to reinstate what we consider to be a valuable institution in Canada.
I have a larger concern, though, which is that the government seems to have moved away from a policy we have had for decades. The census slogan has been that we should count ourselves in, but the government is moving to a policy of counting ourselves out. Not everyone gets counted out in this process. The hon. member who spoke before me pointed out that certain groups have been particularly targeted by the government. He raised the issue of people with disabilities. I would like to talk about the cultural communities that make up Canada.
While in opposition, the current Prime Minister spoke of recent Asian immigrants as “people who live in ghettos and are not integrated into western and Canadian society”. Now in office, the Prime Minister has gone to great lengths to convince Canada's cultural communities that such sentiments are a thing of the past, that there has been a significant change in the Conservative Party's approach to diversity, to inclusiveness.
I beg to disagree. The government's decision to end the long form census betrays the reality that the government has decided to not count those people in who may get left out, people who will be left on the margins of society. They need to be heard. They need to be understood. They need to be valued and represented.
The proposed changes to the census were brought in in the dog days of summer. The government thought it could shift policy dramatically and no one would notice. The opposite is true. Over 350 individuals and significant groups in this country have risen up and have said that they need, want and value the information which the long form census provides.
The government has clearly underestimated the backlash from Canadians from all walks of life. It has tried to raise fears where there were none. It has tried to make fools of experts who would not stand for it. For decades, average Canadians, moms and dads, kids, senior citizens, everyone, have heard the call to count themselves in. They have seen that as an exercise in democracy, an exercise in being valued as individuals, as families and as communities. Now the Conservatives are telling them to count themselves out.
The vital information on our demographic makeup, particularly on new Canadians in our communities, helps determine where the strongest needs are and the most difficult problems we face when helping newcomers integrate into Canadian society. The elimination of this data and the way we are able to analyze it will count as nothing less than a pre-emptive strike on a vital tool that all three orders of government need in order to serve newer Canadians justly and fairly.
In my experience, new Canadians want desperately to integrate. They want desperately to be part of the fabric of Canadian society. Language training and other newcomer services are a vital part of that process. These services need to be offered where newcomers live. To do that, we need to know where they live. We need to know how many of them there are. We need to know what language barriers they face. We need to know what employment they seek. We need to know what their qualifications are. We need to know from where they came. Most important, we need to know where they want to go. This is information that is provided on the census long form.
If the Conservative government gets its way, new Canadians and cultural communities will be under-represented in official data. They will be offered fewer tailored services to help them in their everyday lives.
There is, though, a silver lining in what the government is doing. The Conservative Party usually wants to divide Canadians, but uniquely, the elimination of the long form census has served to unite Canadians.
Last night I met with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. This is a strong constituency that has normally supported the party opposite. It is severely concerned that the information provided by the long form census will be lost. Without that information, it would not know how to plan to eradicate poverty in Canada, to do the good work that it has been involved in. It would not know how it would be able to offer church programs for people who want to be heard, want to be counted in. It would not know where to plan new church development.
This reminds me of the business uses of the data as well. There are businesses across the country that actually purchase census data. They add to the government purse. They want that information in order to know where to put stores and restaurants, how to serve Canadians. They buy data. The census is a money-maker for the government.
Members can imagine how shocked I was to note that not only will we get data that is not valuable and which will actually impede decision making, but it is going to cost $30 million or $35 million more to gather ineffective data. It shocks average Canadians to hear that a government wants to waste money for an ideological reason.
The reality is that churches, synagogues, mosques and the societies who take their concerns forward to the national Parliament are all concerned about this issue. They have raised it, as have social planning councils, libraries, municipalities, provinces, charities, organizations, businesses, business leaders, Canadians who are eminently qualified to talk about the role of statistics, the role of expert evidence, the role of data.
The Conservative government needs to learn that the plural of anecdote is not data. We cannot just tell stories and think that if we tell enough of them, we will get hard data. The reality is that data is based on the scientific collection of information in approved formats that have been ethically tested, that have survived decades of understanding and interpretation, and that will add to a continuum of knowledge over decades. We build on that information.
If we lose this one moment of data collection, we will actually put in jeopardy decades of data collection. We look at trends. We look at how things are changing. We look at where movement is happening. In that way, our academics can analyze the data. Businesses can use it. Community groups can help understand it.
One of those community groups is the Social Planning Toronto. It wrote all members of Parliament, I assume, to raise the issues it is facing in trying to make our cities, communities and neighbourhoods better. John Campey wrote:
Census data provides some of the most reliable socio-demographic data at the neighbourhood level. It simply cannot be replaced by a voluntary survey. In our experience over many decades in communities, we have never been made aware that local citizens resented the time needed to respond to the survey nor that they believed their privacy was being invaded. Quite to the contrary, grass-root community groups have been pleased and grateful to have access to quality data that provide insights on their communities so that as citizens they can engage in responsible and informed decision making on local issues.
The census data tells us the makeup of communities, the age, gender, ethnicity, language and income levels, emerging demographic data. How are we going to understand and cope with an aging population, decreasing birth rates, immigration trends, local labour force changes, unemployment, under-employment, types of work, transportation needs? Those are the kinds of things that help us to provide a society that works, a community that is compassionate, cities that are livable, and a country that stands as a model to the world about the way we value expertise and the way we use it to make our society better.