Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, we would like to thank the former chief statistician, Wayne Smith, on his long, 35 years of service to Canada and to Statistics Canada.
We promised Canadians in the last election that we would reinstate the long-form census, and by golly, they responded in great numbers, historic numbers. That is a great testament to Mr. Smith's work.
Our government remains committed to reinforcing the independence of Stats Canada. We are working on that. We are making sure that it is an important part of the minister's mandate letter. We are going to continue with that work.