Mr. Speaker, while New Democrats are happy to see measures that would promote independence of the chief statistician, as usual with the Liberals, the devil is always in the detail.
I am not sure how having a five-year term that is renewable makes people more independent than having essentially a career long term. I am also not sure when a Liberal government in its previous incarnation started the privatization of statistic service, handing over control of data to private organizations. When we get to committee, I think we will have a lot of very detailed questions.
Is the government open to additional measures in the act to ensure that the chief statistician is actually independent and the privacy of Canadian data is protected?