Industry committee  Again I would have the same view. The fine itself is not the issue. There is a notion in Canada, and it has been well promoted and well understood, that filling out the census is mandatory. I don't think people look at the fine. The fines are not evoked very often. I don't think that's the notion.

Industry committee  Oh, the fines probably have to be there on paper, but I think they're not really the central issue. If people understand that this is a benefit and is part of being a Canadian citizen, they will fill it out whether there are fines or not. They won't pay attention to the existence of the fines.

Industry committee  The fines are there on paper. It's more of an attitude and it's a promotion of it. “Census day”: there has been a lot of promotion around that. There has been promotion that this is part of your duty as a Canadian. There are broader benefits to you as an individual: better shepherding of your government taxes, better benefits to other Canadians.

Industry committee  No, it isn't.

Industry committee  No. I think, first of all, the promotion would be different under those two, and I think you do need some measure, on paper at least, hopefully not used very much, of some kind of fines, but certainly not jail.

Industry committee  First of all, my general point—and we did release a letter yesterday, as part of the Statistics Canada national committee—is that we set out a number of principles for the questions. I think the principles are more important than individual questions. We should go through each individual question and determine its importance, and more importantly, can the answers be given from other sources?

Industry committee  Can I just add something to that?

Industry committee  I think one of the principal concerns is the loss of continuity.

Industry committee  Take as an example the study predicting diabetes. Nobody does a study that just looks at one particular census; you're always tracking the changes over five years. So you'd be looking at the determinants of health outcomes not just in 2006 but also in 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2006, and looking at the changes in lifestyles and then predicting from that.

Industry committee  I think we have enough experience in Canada with existing surveys and from other countries to know there would be a sharp distinction in the response rate. I'm personally not troubled if the response rate dropped, from almost 100%, even 20 or perhaps even 40 percentage points, if it was still representative of the population.