Madam Speaker, last June, when the Conservative government announced that it was going to change how the census was taken, hundreds of groups immediately and publicly denounced the government's decision. Consequently, I am pleased that we are having this debate today, especially since I am a member of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, which held emergency meetings this summer to examine the issue.
By announcing this decision in the summer, the government undoubtedly hoped to slip it by hundreds of organizations, experts, researchers, professional associations, universities and others more easily. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology had to hold emergency meetings to determine the reasons for the Conservative government's decision to change a questionnaire that collects important data about Canada. The committee heard from various groups affected by the changes made to the census.
Before going any further, I will summarize the changes that the government wants to make. First, the mandatory long form census questionnaire, which has been used for 35 years and includes detailed questions about various socio-economic aspects of households, is being eliminated. In 2006, this form was sent to 20% of the population at random. The Conservative government, for reasons that are still unclear, wants to replace it with a shorter questionnaire that would have more general questions, be less useful and remain mandatory. The questions pertain to the number of people living in each household, their age and their sex and is sent out to all citizens.
The government now intends to send the long form to 30% of the population, but it will be voluntary. That is the crux of the problem—the decision made to move from a mandatory form to a voluntary form.
In an interview with the Globe and Mail, the Minister of Industry said that he wants to put an end to the intrusion of the state in people's lives. I will read his statement: “I think you’ll have a much more honest and enthusiastic response than you would under the threat of fines or jail times to elicit a response. I would question the validity of that.”
The minister's statement leaves me feeling confused about the government's true intentions. We have an approach that has been working relatively well for many years, yet for reasons that seem to me to be purely ideological, the government decided, without consulting anyone, to make radical changes to a tool that provides very valuable information to hundreds of organizations in Quebec and Canada. Moreover, switching from a mandatory long form census to a voluntary questionnaire will cost the government an additional $30 million. Why increase federal government spending when there is a deficit? I know that some government members will sensationalize the issue by saying that it is unacceptable to send a person to jail for refusing to fill in the form, but nobody has ever been sent to jail. Would it not be better to amend the law to remove that section rather than toss out the whole system? Before he resigned in July, the former head of Statistics Canada said that replacing the mandatory form with a voluntary form would be less effective.
The government's decision to do this is surprising. It seems the government has decided to scrap the only tool that enables it to get a picture of Canadian society every five years. It is important to be able to compare data over time and to make plans for the kind of society we want in the future.
The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne has taken the government's proposed changes in the long form to the Federal Court.
If the long form is not mandatory, the government will no longer have access to reliable, representative data to ensure that it complies with its obligations under the Official Languages Act to provide federal government services in French.
The Bloc Québécois believes that this decision was based on strictly ideological criteria that will undermine the ability of Quebec and its municipalities to develop targeted, effective public policies.
By diminishing the quality of the information available, the government is trying to suppress legitimate criticism of its policies. The Conservative government wasted no time discrediting information collected by Statistics Canada in order to justify its ideological decisions.
As the Liberal Party motion proposes, we believe that prison sentences should be eliminated, but that fines should remain. However, we are open to any other measures, such as refusing to provide certain government services—for example, passport renewal—to citizens who have not filled in the form.
Changing the census was a unilateral decision that has been heavily criticized by countless civil society stakeholders. The decision echoed the American right, which opposes census-taking despite the its confidential nature.
For those who were not able to follow this file closely over the summer, I would like to remind them that certain associations have condemned this decision.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities stated that it is worried that these changes mean that cities will no longer have reliable, local information, especially when it comes time to create new transit routes or decide where social housing should be built.
Pierre Noreau, president of the Association francophone pour le savoir, also condemned this extremely problematic situation, saying that social science researchers cannot do without such complete and reliable data. Through their analyses, researchers are able to propose solutions to the challenges we are facing, including an aging population, managing our health care system and immigration issues.
The Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d'université believes that the changes the government has made to the census will have serious consequences for university research. The federation believes that eliminating the mandatory long form census will make it almost to impossible to describe how a situation—be it social, linguistic or economic—is evolving without personally undertaking specific, complex and costly studies.
The Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d'université went even further to say this, “It is devastating. When a government has to choose among various policies, it can consult the available data and make a decision based on facts and not simply on political preference.”
For the Canadian Institute of Planners, changes to how Canada gathers census information will have negative effects on the growth and development of Canada's communities.
Jean-Pierre Beaud and Jean-Guy Prévost, professors at the Université du Québec à Montréal who are experts on the census, were unequivocal, saying, “Two or three years ago there was an uproar when a study on income trends showed that there was a growing gap between rich and poor. The right-wing media lashed out, accusing Statistics Canada of Marxism. There is tension between the government and Statistics Canada, which exposes a reality they would rather not see.”
Lastly, I would like to quote Martin Simard, a research professor at the department of human sciences at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, who claims that we need to maintain the mandatory long form census.
So the data may be deemed as less reliable, especially for academic research. That may hinder our research, making it less accurate than the research done in other countries. That may also affect private companies that conduct market studies to choose locations for restaurants or businesses. Major problems will also arise in the development of public policies, especially locally and regionally where data may be even more inaccurate.
I could have mentioned more organizations, associations or individuals who spoke out about the census form, but I think that in general, their comments were proof of the need to maintain the long form census in its original form.
The Bloc Québécois thinks that Ottawa's decision is incomprehensible and especially unexplainable. But I am sure we will hear all kinds of arguments over the course of the day. Earlier, we heard one argument from the minister. We heard that even if it is mandatory, we have no way of proving that the public will respond honestly, that the government must protect citizens from invasion of privacy, that the government should not threaten people by interfering in their private lives. But all of these arguments are just smoke and mirrors. The Conservatives actually abolished the long form census for ideological reasons, and the Bloc Québécois thinks that is unacceptable.