Mr. Speaker, the member's intervention tonight brings me back to many discussions we had at the industry committee. I always value what he brings, in terms of passion and anecdotes. It is better than the humour and irony we were hearing earlier. The Conservative member could not have been serious with most of what he was saying about the previous Conservative government being good at statistics.
Statistics were being used as policy-based evidence, and we are moving toward evidence-based policy, I hope, with this legislation. We looked at how to determine the process to have statistics independent. We talked about the United Nations at our committee, and how it was writing principles that the OECD had adopted, so that we could do report cards nation to nation and know that we are operating under some similar principles of independence.
Professional independence in Canada was always a matter of convention instead of a matter of law. We are trying to move toward having independence as a matter of law, and we had some great conversations at the INDU committee about how we could that. Munir Sheikh was a great witness we heard from. He had resigned seven years ago over political interference in statistics. He was trying to be independent, but he found a lot of political interference.
When we are looking at the Westminster system, ministerial control has to go through the House of Commons. Major changes to census questions, or other critical questions have to go through the House. Would the member comment on where we stand with the Westminster system in this policy?