Debates of Sept. 28th, 2010

Opposition Motion—Long Form Census

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, it will come as no surprise to the hon. member that I disagree with his premise and therefore I disagree with his conclusions. However, for the record, we believe we have found a reasonable balance.

The thing that has continued to shock and surprise me during this debate, since the end of June really, is how cavalier some members of this place are when considering and supporting the idea that coercion should be used and we can not or will not look at any alternatives.

We have taken the time to look at alternatives, to try to get “useful and usable data”, to use the chief statistician's own words. At the same time, we have tried to balance this requirement and need in some parts of our society for this data with an approach that will respect the rights of Canadians from coercive intrusion into some very personal aspects of their lives.

That is the fair and reasonable balance that we stand for on this side of the House.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, the minister's argument is rather inconsistent because he still supports the mandatory short form census with the same sanctions. We know that one of the questions requires the respondent to provide their date of birth and it is mandatory that the person respond. I have always been told that it is impolite to ask a woman her date of birth or her age. It is simply not done. It is too personal.

The minister is accusing the opposition of wanting to put people in prison because we want them to fill out the form, but he is the one insisting that everyone—men and women alike—give their date of birth to census workers. Why does he want to put people in jail for refusing to provide their date of birth?

It is absurd. The minister does not want to put people in jail any more than any member of Parliament wants to. By all accounts, to have reliable data, we have to make sure people respond in a reliable way.

I would like the minister to explain this contradiction.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, there is no contradiction. The results of the census are important. I have already said that. It is important to have a short census with responses, but at the same time, with regard to the long form census, it is important to strike a balance between society's needs in terms of data and information. Nonetheless, we need to come up with a solution to ensure that it is not mandatory to answer very private questions.

The hon. member stands in his place and tries to strike a reasonable pose, but when his leader, the Bloc leader, was asked how he would enforce the census, he said he would take away citizens' passports, take away their drivers' licences, refuse EI. That is the Bloc solution to this problem. That is not the best solution for Canadians.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Minister of State (Western Economic Diversification)]

Madam Speaker, because it has been suggested that people do not feel threatened if they do not fill out the long census form, I am wondering how many court cases there are. I know there is one in Saskatchewan that is going before the courts again this fall. The lady did not fill out the form, and for the benefit of the opposition, who claim that this is a political move we are making, she has made it quite clear that she does not vote Conservative. It is the only policy of the Conservatives she has ever agreed with. She has to fight this in the courts.

I would like the minister to comment on that.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is correct: there is still a court case, so I cannot get into some of the details. It is a matter of public record, but the person in question has, since the previous census, taken the government to court because of the intrusiveness and the coercion involved.

This is a matter that has from time to time raised its head. The number of complaints that MPs receive tends to increase census by census. This seems to be a bit of a societal shift. People are more careful about their privacy now than in past generations. But I think it is also because the number of questions that are being asked continues to grow. Certainly, most of us would agree that some of the questions are private questions, intrusive questions. But not everybody would think so. Some people have no problem answering those questions, and we would encourage them to do so, but not everybody feels that way.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have watched the Minister of Industry twist himself into a pretzel trying to justify the ill-advised decision of the government. I think he is an intelligent man who is not really comfortable with what he is saying, but he is saying it because he has to toe the party line.

I want to ask him a direct question. Did Statistics Canada tell you that going to a voluntary system would lessen the quality of data?

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I would ask hon. members to direct their questions through the chair.

The hon. minister has 30 seconds for a response.

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Madam Speaker, I actually like pretzels but I am not a pretzel. I want to state that for the record.

In answer to the member's question directly, it is no secret that Statistics Canada would have liked to stay with the status quo. I have never made any bones about that. Our duty and responsibility, however, is to balance the need for data with the rights of Canadians. Of course, we understand that many people, like the statisticians and business community, would like to have more data. But we have tried to strike a balance.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

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.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his input.

I was taken aback by the minister's argument that people were being harassed and that therefore the government had to do this, because it does not want Canadians to be harassed. Yet it strikes me that if there is harassment going on, it is not evidence that there is a problem with the census; there is a problem with the census takers.

I am curious. I would have asked the minister why.

When the government first announced the decision, it said, and I quote from the official government position, “The fundamental principle we're defending here is the right of citizens not to divulge personal information”.

It was really simple. It was their right not to divulge. Yet it is a constitutional obligation of the government to take a census. It makes no sense--maybe no census either--that we would not want to proceed with the census simply because if one is protecting the rights of Canadians not to divulge information, one is in fact working against the Constitution and is saying that it is okay if nobody responds.

I wonder if the hon. member has some response to that.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to make one thing clear right now. I am obviously in favour of keeping the long form questionnaire that has been used for 35 years.

I do not believe that I said anything about harassment. What I wanted to say was that the Conservative government would be all over the map today when explaining why it made this decision.

I believe that it does not take a great deal of effort for a Quebecker or a Canadian to fill out the long form questionnaire every five years. First of all, the questionnaire is sent to 20% of the population. Thus, every five years, it is sent to one fifth of Canadians. This means that, as a citizen, I will have to co-operate. But it is normal for citizens to work with their government and provide personal information that will serve a purpose. We know that the information is confidential. In my case, in 25 years, I may be chosen once to co-operate with the government and provide all the information. That does not seem to be asking a lot of people.

Therefore, today, the Bloc Québécois is against the position taken by the minister this summer. We must be critical of the government's arguments because they are not defensible.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Madam Speaker, my question for the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord is simple. I would first like to remind him that all Canadians participate in the national census every five years, and that will not change.

However, to hear him speak this morning, one might think the earth would stop spinning because we changed the national household survey. Yet as we heard this morning, that form dates back to only 1971. Canada did just fine for 104 years and it will continue to do so. As we also heard, the census has been changed. Some questions have been added and others removed. The methodology has changed. The census, like Canadian society, is evolving. That is what the minister told us this morning, because, as we heard, the national survey was invading people's privacy.

I was shocked to hear that my colleague wants to place people under house arrest and take away their passports for refusing to answer a questionnaire. I consider that an unacceptable infringement on my freedom. If that is the Bloc's idea of democracy, I say no, thank you.

My question is this: What would he say to people who refuse to answer the questionnaire? Would he send them to prison? And what would he say to researchers—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would have liked the hon. member to attend the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology meeting held this summer. Experts appeared before us and told us that the Minister of Industry's decision was not based on any scientific facts. That is the problem.

Do we want scientific data; do we want reliable data? That is what the experts asked us. In that regard, I think the minister made a very serious mistake.

What will I say to my constituents? I will say what I said earlier: co-operation is needed. We receive government services and, of course, sooner or later, we must co-operate. I would add that they will be asked to complete the questionnaire only once over a 25-year period, and it will take them about 30 or perhaps 45 minutes, but that is what it means to co-operate.

That is how I replied and I can say one thing: the message is getting through.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, the minister received a series of correspondence in his office when he changed the policy. There were 3,695 individuals and organizations who contacted his office. Of those, 3,456 were opposed to the Conservative idea of spending more money on the census and having less quality data, and 239 supported the minister.

I would like to ask my colleague why, if that is the party that is supposed to be listening to its constituents, the minister is being hypocritical. He is supposed to be listening to his constituents on issues, but on this issue we see a level of response that is clearly in favour of keeping the status quo as opposed to spending more.

To finish, 84.5% of that correspondence was from individuals, not from special interest groups.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Madam Speaker, I understood from the question that the minister had—I think—heard from some people who were opposed to his decision. This summer, I had the opportunity to ask the Minister of Industry some questions. I asked him whether he had consulted anyone before making his decision. Do you know what he told me? He said there were no consultations. He made a decision. He said that, as minister, it was his responsibility. He made this decision.

I heard the hon. member for Beauce say that he was getting criticism and complaints about the census. I can say that I did not receive any complaints in my riding. One person called me. He is a professor and researcher at the local university. I invited him to come share his thoughts. In other words, in all this time, I have received only one complaint. Only one person has protested.

Therefore, what they said, what the minister said and what the hon. member for Beauce said about receiving tons of complaints is absolutely false. It does not hold water.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to commend my colleague. He did a good job of exposing the absurdity of this decision, which was made under the radar this summer, when the House was not in session.

I do not want to go back over the various comments that could be made about the government's decision. The only thing I want to ask my colleague about is the fact that we have a government before us that believes in Canadian unity, in consulting the provinces and in collaboration. I wonder why the government is not consulting the provinces that have shared jurisdiction over this. That is the case for Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Manitoba. These provinces have already spoken out against this policy that the government wants to bring in.

I would like the hon. member to say a few words about the need to respect jurisdictions and to consider what is best for the country before introducing such legislation.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question.

Clearly, this is a government that says one thing and does another. And here is the proof. In normal circumstances, if the minister were to consult with the provinces, he would change his mind and reverse his decision, because many provinces oppose the decision. But he did not consult the provinces, and he does not listen to them. Therefore, I have to conclude that there is only one reason for this decision: ideology. I can think of no other way to explain it.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this issue. I will be sharing my time with the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River.

This issue should not even be in front of us here in Parliament as we are consumed with so many other issues relating to the economy, health, the environment and global warming. We have a situation where we are dealing with an issue that is based on science in terms of data accumulation, but that has met an ideological front, being the Conservative Party of Canada and a minister who want to dismantle it. I honestly believe this is a short part of a longer game to eliminate discourse in this country and to make further cuts to individuals, organizations and groups that sometimes are on the fringe of society and need support. This serves the government's ideological agenda quite significantly, otherwise there would no reason to discuss it.

The first thing I want to touch on is the ludicrous arguments by the minister. It was interesting to watch him again in the House of Commons this morning. It is almost embarrassing. It is embarrassing because he gets up and talks about how the opposition wants to put people in jail and that government agents go to people's doors and infringe on their privacy. He uses language that is not becoming, I believe, of minister and is not defensible when we look at the actual facts.

The first fact is that the government's policy is to keep a policy it has had for four years, which is that if people do not finish their census or they do not fill out the form there is jail time. There is no way it can get around that. It has had this policy in place for four years, and had knowledge of it, and now throws it back on opposition members. When we looked at this policy, we said that it did not make any sense, that it did not seem fair, that we did not care to have it and that we did not want it either. We know that it was not even being used. We have not dragged people out of their homes, arrested them and put them behind bars, but that is the minister's policy.

For four years, the current government has known about that. It has had to plan the census. It has had to plan what it would do with it and how it would roll it out, and the government has maintained that. It is nothing more than a cheap game at the end of the day to try to fear monger.

The government tried earlier in the campaign to end the mandatory census when it talked about personal privacy. All of a sudden, there was a huge privacy concern that the minister raised originally. I picked up the phone and called the Privacy Commission to ask if it had concerns about the census. I found out that very few Canadians, in over 10 years, or something like that, had actually even called in to register a complaint, and then it worked on those complaints.

What I also learned in that conversation was that the census had already gone through a Treasury Board audit for privacy, which is required. So, the census that has been compiled, that has been written and that we have already spent money on it to make it ready to go, has gone through an internal privacy audit here in the House of Commons.

It also went through a privacy audit through the Privacy Commissioner. The Privacy Commissioner had already vetted the questions that would be on the census. In fact, the Privacy Commission described the relationship with Statistics Canada as being excellent and, in fact, ongoing. They worked together hand-in-hand to ensure they would get good quality data, that Canadians would be protected in terms of their privacy and that that they would eliminate these issues even before they came to the forefront.

The minister had to drop that argument but picked up the mantle of “we're going to put people in jail”.

During question period, which I have been listening to since the discussions began, for the minister to continue to talk about throwing people in jail and how it is wrong, is embarrassing because we know that is not happening. We know that is his policy that he never changed and we know Canadians are not buying that hyperbole.

What Canadians want to know is why the government wants to spend more money, advertise more and print more to do a census that would be voluntary, that would achieve limited results, that would throw away all the comparable data that we did in the past because we would not be able to compare them, and that has met universal opposition from business organizations to small community groups, even the remotest communities and aboriginal communities? They all recognize that the census in its current state is a much better option than what the minister and the Conservative Party are proposing.

The House of Commons is supposed to be a place where we can work together. What we learned from the minister's testimony this summer when we were called back to the committee was that on June 17 an order in council was made to make the mandatory census into a national household survey, similar to a bad experiment that was done in the United States but in reverse.

When I was at the Canada-U.S. Parliamentary Association meeting in Louisville this summer, Congress members, senators and census people from all across the United States were watching what Canada was doing and asking why we were doing it. They said that they had already gone there and that they had to reverse themselves because it had caused them all kinds of problems. They were mystified as to what was taking place in Canada.

At committee on June 17 we learned that, while the minister was in the House of Commons, he was already scheming to change the census without telling anybody else. The industry committee has a history of working fairly well together with members and try to be non-partisan. Normally, we would study an issue, call in some experts, examine the issue and then table some recommendations back to the House. The minister harboured that.

On June 26 the Canada Gazette issued the change but it was not until July 1 or 5 that the minister made his first public comments on the issue. As a result of those comments, on July 21, Munir Sheikh, the chief statistician of Canada, resigned because of what the minister said in public. It was a pretty dramatic departure.

In that context, the supposedly fiscal Conservatives, who claim to be good with people's money, ended up spending more. The industry committee had to be recalled, which resulted in more money and more time being spent, not to mention more waste. We could have met during the last session of Parliament and it would have been a more co-operative environment. The Conservatives refused to give agreement to scheduling, so one meeting was a complete waste of time and it cost thousands of dollars.

We are supposed to be protecting the pocketbooks of Canadians right now but because of the Conservatives' ideology and headstrong position, they ended up costing Canadians more money. I will repeat that again. To do the census the way the Conservatives want to do it will cost Canadians at least $30 million more. On top of that, businesses, researchers, churches and other types of religious organizations, indigenous populations, scientists, a whole series of groups and organizations that are the customers that buy the census data to the tune of millions of dollars, are telling us that this will ruin the census.

The response rate to the census is around 95%. The census acts as a scientific backstop to other types of surveys and data.

I have a letter written by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada to the minister. This group was consulted about the census in general. It says in the letter, “At no time was there any indication that the long form might be eliminated”. This group is opposed to this and has offered other suggestions to help out. However, the minister has refused.

Canadians have a choice in this: pay more money for the Conservative agenda or save more money and have less hassle by keeping the census the way it is, protect the scientific data that is necessary for a civilized society and ensure we will be able to use all the past investments Canadians have actually put into by completing past censuses. That is what we need to do.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Madam Speaker, I, like my friend who just spoke, am shocked at this decision. I am shocked at the repercussions and the effect it will have on Canadians. Every group that spoke on this issue, with the exception of the Fraser Institute, spoke strongly against it.

Does the member know how this decision was made by the government? It obviously did not consult the Statistics Canada task force. It did not consult with any groups, organizations or individuals. Statistics Canada was consulted and it opposed it. There were no religious organizations. The government did not consult with its own cabinet, its own MPs nor with any senators.

Is my friend aware of anyone in Canada who was consulted about this particular decision?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister probably consulted the minister and told him to get rid of it. The minister is probably the only person who was actually consulted in this process, because it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Making this decision during a parliamentary recess, when work was going on behind the scenes when Parliament was in session, undermines a process of democracy that is really important. If the government had this idea, why did it not bring it forward to Parliament and have the evidence come forward and prove its case? There are times in the House when there is common ground, but the government did not do that. It did it over the summer. It tried to sneak it though but it became exposed and that is the end result.

All kinds of groups and organizations were actually there prepping the mandatory census. They were actually consulted under the mandatory census basis. The Conservatives went through the privacy audits of the census, they finished all that work and then later on decided to change it to a national survey. It makes no sense and consequently it will cost $30 million more for this plan.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, given that the Conservatives should be looking at best practice, and certainly in the past they have liked to follow the United States, we only have to look back to 2003 when George Bush was the president of the United States and this experiment was tried there. The U.S. Census Bureau conducted an experiment in 2003 and what did it find out? It found out that the data degraded so much that fixing it would be too expensive and the idea was quickly abandoned.

Did the Conservatives look at other jurisdictions? If they had taken time to look at other jurisdictions, they would have found that this movie had already been played and it was a failure.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, my colleague is correct. This Frankenstein approach to the census is clearly a flop.

What is sad about this is that it is really a scientific debate in terms of the response rates. If we have a voluntary response rate, we will have lower numbers. The Conservatives, however, have decided to spend more money to send more people more census forms. This does not even pass the nod test. In a sense, sure they will get more responses, but if they get over-response in areas like Calgary, Vancouver or Montreal versus rural Canada, the data will be skewed. It is important to make reference to the fact that the data will be skewed and therefore useless.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Madam Speaker, Canadians listening to this debate will be caught in two worlds. First, the world the government is projecting, which is that this is all about forcing mandatory imprisonment and that is what the long form census is all about. It has been for 144 years. It is a story of imprisoning Canadians for not wanting to give their personal information.

This side of the House reflects on the fact that educational institutions, those who provide educational administration, health administration, social services and others, use that information to provide appropriate services with the best use of taxpayer dollars.

In all of our collective experience in dealing with the long form census, does the member know how many Canadians have been jailed?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, there have been zero people jailed. The reality we are facing, though, is that this is the Conservatives' policy. They have had it for four years, and that is their policy. They can try to make us wear it, but they are just making it up, because it is their policy. It is also their policy to spend $30 million more, and it is their policy to treat farmers differently by having fines and penalties for the mandatory agriculture survey. They have not changed that either.