Mr. Speaker, it is okay if I have only a few minutes. This is an important subject, and I am pleased to have the honour to rise in the House and support such a bill. I must congratulate my colleague who introduced this bill in the House.
Before becoming an MP, I was a researcher. I did research at a federal research council, and I know the importance of research. I also know how important it is to have research that is independent from the government. That is why I applaud this bill. We must provide all federal government researchers and statisticians with independence and the power to tell us the truth on various aspects of things.
By the way, I deeply regret the loss of the long form census.
This was a tool that researchers had that was very valuable. I saw, in my former career, several researchers use it to very good ends. It allowed us to track some major demographic trends in our country. It allowed us to track income inequality, what was going on with aboriginal populations, with aging, with the challenges of many Canadians.
Unfortunately, perhaps, it was a tool that was too useful in criticizing the government and perhaps that is one of the reasons why it disappeared.
I have no disagreement with my former colleague who spoke about making criminals out of people who do not want to fill out forms. There is no doubt that, on that point, I agree. However, what is more important here is really the issue of the independence of the chief statistician and the independence of researchers in this country to speak truth power, to do the research they do.
The long arm of the government should be shortened with regard to the control of what people can research. That control can be done tacitly and it can be done explicitly at different levels. One of the tools the government has is the conditions under which money comes to these research councils and to Statistics Canada. In that way, the government can force research to go in a certain direction. That is truly unfortunate because we do need curiosity-driven research in this country. We never know when researchers will find something that is of extreme use to our country, and they can only do that if they have the greatest amount of latitude to research what it is that they think is important.
There are several works written in the past that at the time they were written were ridiculed. We could say that Darwin was ridiculed at the beginning of his findings. Today, we realize the degree to which that particular book on the origin of the species has been fundamental in our understanding of the human being and of the evolution of life on this planet, but at the time it was ridiculed. That was curiosity-driven research. At the time, he had a patron and he had money, so he was allowed to research the way he wanted to.
Fundamentally, I fully support the bill. I think it would be a good addition and a breath of fresh air for the research community.