Mr. Speaker, the original question by the member did touch on science and technology and the government's approach to science and my answer therefore reflected that. We do not know ahead of time what line of questioning the opposition might take when it goes into these late show debates, but I did try to address the issue he brought up in his original question.
In his intervention the member also brought up the census. He is right, the government has changed the long form census. It is no longer mandatory. We now have a national household survey because we do not believe that Canadians should be threatened with fines and jail time because they do not want to tell the government what their religion is or how much housework they do or how many bedrooms they have in their house. That is something this government will not do.
We changed the guidelines and changed what was a mandatory long form census to the national household survey.
We will continue to respect the privacy of Canadians.