Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this motion today, moved by my colleague from Westmount—Ville-Marie, calling on the government to reinstate immediately the long form census.
The motion, as members know, goes somewhat further by calling:
...on the government to introduce legislative amendments to the Statistics Act to remove completely the provision of imprisonment from Section 31 of the Act in relation to the Long-form Census, the Census of Population and the Census of Agriculture.
As members know, I questioned a member of the government earlier on the fact that at 12 o'clock today the census on agriculture still has a fine of $500 and a threat of imprisonment. That shows the double standard that the government has and the lack of principle for its remarks on this particular issue.
This is an extremely important motion in that it goes to the heart of political decision making at all levels, decisions that should be based on facts and facts that should be based on absolutely accurate data. Whether it is a bus route in a city, a school in a community, a rural community centre or a rural health centre, those decisions by municipalities, by provincial governments, by federal governments and by community advisory committees rely on accurate data. Therefore, accurate data is essential.
An article in The Globe and Mail by Steven Chase outlines how ridiculous the current government's position on the census is and has been. He states:
A study conducted by Statistics Canada weeks before Ottawa revealed its plan to scrap the mandatory long-form census found that significant errors can creep into survey results gathered on a voluntary basis.
He goes on to say, “it'll undermine the rich trove of data upon which they rely”.
I would add that because of the way the government is changing the 2011 census, it will throw off the trend lines and the reliability over time of data that Canada has become famous for around the world. We were respected around the world through Statistics Canada. We were the model to follow. The government is undermining that respect and that international reputation.
The article in The Globe and Mail goes on to say how the “new census-taking rules could skew data in a range of areas from housing to demographics”.
As the article implies, anyone who deals with statistics and data collection around the world knows that a voluntary census is flawed.
However, to make it even worse, the government is not only going to go to the voluntary census, it is trying to cover it up by putting out more forms, which will actually make the data even more unreliable because it will skew the figures. It is spending $30 million more than the regular census for less reliable information. Does that make sense? I know this is a borrow and spend government and there is nothing even on the census that it does not want to spend more money on to get less reliable information. Does that make sense? I certainly think not.
However, as we have seen on so many issues on what the government does, it does not want its government of ideology, ideology over substance and ideology over facts, and it takes the position of not letting the facts get in the way of decisions it wants to make and it will try everything to skew those facts. We have seen that in some of the debates recently in this House.
The government's position is clear. It is ideology over substance and ideology over facts that infiltrates most of the decisions of the government.
In my responsibility as agriculture critic, I can look at the Canadian Wheat Board. The minister does not want to hear the facts of that issue either. In fact, he has been minister for a long time, but he has not even been to its offices yet because he does not want to learn the good work it does. My point is it is ideology—