Industry committee  You're pointing out about cybersecurity threats and how things are evolving on that front. First of all, we go to great lengths to make sure that, once the confidential information comes into Statistics Canada, it's kept in isolated systems that don't have external connections and so on.

Industry committee  Perhaps I could turn to.... It's not the National Statistics Council per se, but we actually have an advisory committee on labour markets and how that whole situation is continuing to evolve. That also builds on a number of previous studies. I think Don Drummond did a study earlier, on labour market availability.

Industry committee  As I said, infrastructure requirements continue to increase. They always will. There's no autopilot button. You have to work with parties. And we continue to work with them, and it's been very collaborative and very productive since.

Industry committee  As I explained earlier, the legislation now codifies the various responsibilities in law. The government and the minister, reporting to Parliament, obviously, are accountable for the broad needs of the nation aligned to the policy needs. I think that is part of the benefit of my being able to sit at various DM policy tables, making sure that I'm certainly aware of where those needs are and where we have gaps and how those needs are evolving and how we can be part of the solution.

Industry committee  I think what I just talked about applies to the census as well. As I said, the questions on the census are gazetted, they're put in Governor in Council.... That's the content piece. That's encoded in law, and that's still the case in this proposed bill. The methodology and how this information can be provided is a statistical matter, so sampling, whether it's mandatory or voluntary, remains in the purview of the chief statistician with all the mechanisms that I talked about.

Industry committee  Perhaps I could dispel a couple of misconceptions out there. The National Statistics Council was established back in 1985 to have broad representation from various aspects of society to make sure we were getting good advice on our statistical programs. As I mentioned earlier, our system of advisory committees has evolved quite a bit since then, and we have seven committees dedicated to ensuring that we have appropriate representation of each province and territory—not one, but seven.

Industry committee  I took over on September 19. I think it's fair to say that there were significant opportunities to improve our relationship with Shared Services Canada in ensuring that we had the necessary capacity in the form of disk space and servers and so on for us to be able to do our job and make sure we weren't putting our ability at risk to put out information on a timely basis.

Industry committee  First of all, every single employee of Statistics Canada, in the act as well as beyond the act, in terms of the spirit of it, takes confidentiality and privacy protection very seriously. It is something that is indoctrinated in us right from day one.

Industry committee  Just to continue to provide that clarity, because we take that oath and that legal requirement to protect the confidentiality and privacy of respondent data seriously, the actual handling of confidential information or questionnaires, the data itself, is never outsourced to anybody else.

Industry committee  It's done by Statistics Canada employees.

Industry committee  That's what I'm saying. When you talk about something that's done inside that is now going to be done outside, which is essentially that definition, anything that is done outside does not involve the handling or access to confidential respondent data. That's the first point. Our expertise is in collection and disseminating of information and the processing of it, so we don't build our own software if it's readily available and we're absolutely certain...and there are a lot of checks and balances in place to make sure.

Industry committee  I think you have to see the landscape today. More and more people are looking at their heritage. They're doing a lot of research. Genealogists, historians, researchers, and academics all rely on that information. What this bill does is provide that information to them 92 years after a census is conducted, because a census is essentially a portrait we take of our country and of our people every five years.

Industry committee  First of all, it's always great to be able to talk statistics with somebody who has had first-hand experience in using and teaching. We're glad that we benefited from your efforts in the form of students. We're grateful for the capacity that's being built across this country, which I think, in itself, is another issue.

Industry committee  First of all, Statistics Canada has always looked for advice on various matters from Canadians, eminent Canadians. In fact, we have 13 advisory committees in various subject-matter areas. We have seven federal-provincial committees, with representation from every province and territory.

Industry committee  We at Statistics Canada take great pride in two basic functions. One is to be able to interact with Canadians and make sure that when they give us their confidential information they can count on Statistics Canada to keep it confidential. The other is to ensure that when we put information out it is trustworthy and credible, so that when Canadians use it, they needn't worry about things such as independence.