Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill S-18, an act to amend the Statistics Act.
At the outset I want to thank members of the Conservative caucus who have talked to me about the legislation. I know they have been contacted by thousands of Canadians across the country, genealogists, historians and others who have a real interest in preserving our history and tracing families and ancestors. I want to openly thank my colleagues who have contacted me about it.
I want to state at the outset that a lot of people have contacted my office wondering why the legislation has taken so long to get to this stage of the debate. I want to state again that we, in the Conservative Party, have been ready to debate the bill for over a month now. We are glad that it is before the House and we will do whatever we can to be as constructive as possible in terms of facilitating it through the legislative process.
We realize that many Canadians have been waiting patiently for the release of 1911 census data. The Conservative Party, in general, supports the release of basic tombstone information from Canadian census records after a 92 year period.
At this point I would like to pay tribute to two of my colleagues who have done a lot of work on this issue. First, the member for Calgary Southeast who introduced the motion in the House, which reads:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should take all necessary steps to release the 1911 census records. Once they had been deposited in the National Archives in 2003, he was able to get the unanimous support of our party at that time.
The motion was debated in March 2000 and yet here we are five years later and the 1911 census still has not been released.
I also want to publicly thank the member for Peace River. He was the industry critic prior to myself. He did a lot of work on this issue and his work formed the basis for the position that I will be announcing here today.
I want to get some background on the legislation. Bill S-18 is an act to amend the Statistics Act. It obviously has been a long time coming. It has had a couple of what people call false starts.
As we all know, census records are an invaluable source of information for those conducting historical and genealogical research. For instance, the 1906 census was a special census that was conducted only in the prairie provinces after the massive influx of immigrants at the turn of the century.
The release of the 1906 census generated more than 4 million hits in the first 12 days it was on line. The same story holds true for the 1901 census, which received more than 50 million hits for its first six months on line. In Canada we keep census information secret for a long period after the data is initially collected. We have kept census information secret for 92 years on average. That is 20 years longer than the Americans do in the United States and 8 years shorter than they do in the United Kingdom. In my view, 92 years is a reasonable time period to keep this information private.
However at the turn of the century ambiguities were raised as to how long such information should be kept from public release. According to Statistics Canada, census takers who travelled from door to door in the early 1900s were given conflicting instructions on how to collect census data. This may have led some Canadians to believe that their information would be kept secret forever.
In 1991, an expert panel was convened by the federal government to examine access to historical records. The panel concluded that no perpetual guarantee of confidentiality rested with the census records and that the passage of time diminished concerns about individual privacy.
In 2004, a federal court ruled that the care and control of the 1911 census records rested with the chief statistician.
Thus, the federal government has received a range of opinions regarding the legality of confidentiality with respect to census records. Even the Department of Justice has changed its stance on the matter over the past six years. Bill S-18 attempts to find a balance between the public good of releasing records and the private right to confidentiality.
In a previous attempt to address this matter, the federal government introduced Bill S-13 in 2003. It tried to reach a compromise between concerns for privacy and the covenant agreed to by Statistics Canada and the Canadian public through the census.
Without going into detail, let me say that the bill did create some controversy over how it would allow limited access to census records after 92 years. That bill died on the order paper when Parliament prorogued in fall 2003.
Now here we are with Bill S-18, which again attempts to resolve the 94 year old question on what to do with the release of census information from 1911 to 2001 and offers a solution to the privacy issues that will face future generations as they fill out their census forms.
If passed, Bill S-18 would allow for the immediate public release of the 1911 census records, currently in their 94th year with Statistics Canada. This is obviously welcome news for hundreds of thousands of historians and genealogists across the country.
One of the most important new sections of Bill S-18 concerns the creation of a confidentiality clause. In all future censuses, Canadians will be asked to decide whether or not they will permit the public to view their records after 92 years from the census date. If they leave the question unanswered on their form, their information would be kept confidential automatically. In seeking consent on each form from every Canadian, Statistics Canada will obtain a relatively clear indication from Canadians as to how they would like their information treated.
I want to say that we do strongly support this clause. We think it is certainly a step in the right direction. Frankly, if this had been done at the turn of the century, we would not be in the situation we have been in for the last 20 years with this uncertainty about the 1911 census. This will create certainty. It will give Canadians the option of whether they want their information released or not.
There is one question I have about this. The new provision has raised some questions about how to deal with minors. For instance, would a child whose parent has indicated to Statistics Canada, on the child's behalf, that his or her information is public be able to change that answer retroactively once he or she turns 18?
I am told by Statistics Canada that Canadians will have an opportunity to change their minds on this issue by applying to Statistics Canada to change their status. This option will be retroactive. That is one issue and I believe the chief statistician did clarify that in his meeting with me, but I would certainly like the government to clarify this, either in debate at second reading or at committee stage.
Statistics Canada was hoping the government would make this bill a priority, as the 2006 census is quickly approaching. The chief statistician would like to begin to educate Canadians about their confidentiality options. I should at this point openly thank the chief statistician, Ivan Fellegi, for meeting with me and also for previously taking into account my concerns in some of the previous legislation introduced to amend the Statistics Act and deal with the census issue.
In our meeting, the chief statistician told me that he believes the current bill strikes an effective balance in ensuring the protection of the interests of the three major groups involved in this issue, statisticians, genealogists and historians, and those for whom privacy issues are the primary concern. I will return to that later in my speech. I believe other colleagues on the Conservative side of the House will also raise some concerns about privacy.
It is my view that the testimony of both the chief statistician and the Privacy Commissioner should be on record with the elected members of this Parliament; that is why we support this bill going to committee and hearing their thoughts at committee. We do not think this is something that we should just fast track without hearing from these individuals. They should be on record on this bill.
I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Standing Committee on Industry, Natural Resources, Science and Technology to ensure that the hearings on this bill are both sufficient and complete. I think we and the other parties in this House would be willing to have a few sittings to try to get this issue dealt with as expeditiously as possible.
To return to Bill S-18, it also provides unrestricted access to personal census records after 92 years for each of the censuses between 1911 and 2001 inclusive. The guaranteed release of these records was the subject of debate within the Conservative Party of Canada and in hearings on Bill S-18 in the Senate. The main source of debate was over the privacy issue, which was raised earlier by my colleague.
The release of census data of any sort raises privacy issues. Some of my colleagues in the Conservative Party believe that if we have given a promise of confidentiality we should not break that promise. Let me paraphrase someone from the other place. Senator Gerald Comeau, when he spoke on the bill in other place, said that “census files hold extremely sensitive and private information on people's nationality, ethnicity and religious beliefs”. This kind of information, especially in today's world where we have all sorts of identity theft, should be considered sacred and treated with the utmost respect and privacy.
The Privacy Commissioner stated to the Senate committee on social affairs that she was happy with Bill S-18 as it relates to privacy and consent. However, some privacy advocates are concerned about the retroactivity of the bill. The commissioner, in her testimony, noted that administering a consent provision, a provision that can be changed over time, to millions of Canadians is going to be an ongoing challenge.
I would like to explore this issue further with both Statistics Canada and the Privacy Commissioner. We should have a discussion about how consent will be administered and about any issues they can foresee that may cause a problem for the census or for Canadians in the future.
I wish to address the whole issue of tombstone information. The origin of the census can be found in European religious institutions that kept vital records concerning their parishioners. These practices were passed on to the colonies, with companies that had large presences in areas like Montreal or Jamestown, Virginia, asking for records of local christenings, marriages and deaths. Some of these early compilations had specific purposes, such as determining the number of men eligible to serve in the military or to establish the apportionment of representation of the population for elected governments.
At the turn of the century, tombstone questions, basic questions like date of birth, name, et cetera, comprised the bulk of the census. However, even at that time, some rather invasive questions were asked, and have been asked since then, ranging even from the mental state of members of a person's family to the type of private company that a person keeps, questions that, understandably, Statistics Canada and Canadians would like to treat very gently.
One has to wonder then, and this is a question that certainly poses itself to me, if these questions are of such a private personal nature, should they be asked at all by a government agency? Should we not in fact at that initial point respect the privacy of individual Canadians and not be asking questions of such a personal nature that even after 92 years we would be debating whether they should be released at all?
I would advise Statistics Canada that perhaps the answer is to limit the types of questions asked so that the concern of privacy is less of a concern for individual Canadians, because the purpose of the census is not to be invasive about a person's choices or a person's health. Most would argue that questions concerning religion should not be asked, because no policy, according to the government officially, should be based on one's own personal religious preferences.
The Privacy Commissioner, according to Statistics Canada itself, said in February 2000:
Census information can be extremely personal, including genetic and other health information about respondents and their families. We should not decide for other people what constitutes an acceptable disclosure of such information.
We in the Conservative Party want to encourage Statistics Canada to review the type of information it collects in both the long and the short form questionnaires. The fact is that Canadians should not be forced to divulge information that is of such a personal nature that it would be embarrassing to a citizen or that citizen's family after a 92 year period. We would strongly encourage Statistics Canada to review this.
Frankly, we would also like Statistics Canada to examine the policy of compelling a citizen to fill out the long form or the short form. Providing the option of whether one wants this information released is a good first step, but I think that then should lead to the debate of whether we as a government and through a government agency ought to compel citizens to fill out either a long form or a short form against their own wishes.
In conclusion, I want to thank the House for the opportunity to discuss these issues. It has taken a long time to create the bill. I want to say that members of the historical and genealogical communities have been very patient in waiting for this legislation. We certainly realize that. We realize that many consultations have taken place.
I want to state very clearly that the Conservative Party of Canada supports the bill, but we would like to hear from witnesses with respect to the privacy matters raised by the release of the 1911 census and concerning attempts to resolve future ambiguities surrounding privacy and the collection of census data.
We should ensure that we get it right now so there are no discrepancies in the future. I do want to say very clearly that the Conservative Party supports a release of basic tombstone information from Canadian census records after 92 years. We also support the new confidentiality clause that allows Canadians to decide in future censuses whether or not to make their information public after 92 years.
The Conservative Party believes that Statistics Canada should review the type of information it collects in both the long form and short form census questionnaires because we believe that Canadians should not be forced to divulge information that is of such a personal nature it would be embarrassing to a citizen or family after 92 years.
I know that other colleagues of mine will want to address the bill as well. We will be supporting it going to committee at second reading. We will be constructively adding to the debate at committee stage. We are hoping to move this issue through Parliament as expeditiously as possible.
