Industry committee  The way the bill is laid out, in broad terms, is to separate the “what” from the “how”. I think for Statistics Canada to be relevant, it has to make sure that it is responding to the policy needs of the nation and how they're evolving, and I think the government sets that policy direction and defines what the gaps are.

Industry committee  Statistics Canada has been one of the pre-eminent statistical agencies in the world. In fact, it is operated very much in line with the legislation. What has happened over time is that a number of organizations like the United Nations and the OECD have actually formalized a lot of the good practices that statistical agencies, at least the eminent ones across the globe, follow.

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the committee for inviting me to appear today. I appreciate this opportunity to provide some brief opening remarks. I am accompanied today by Andrée Desaulniers, a senior analyst at Statistics Canada. Ms. Desaulniers is here to help me and, more specifically, to answer any technical questions you may have about the bill.

Industry committee  The contracts were, first, divided into two phases, and in fact the first phase was a test phase. In the second phase, there was always the intent to exercise the kind of changes that we needed, for various reasons, and it was very clear in that phase that no contractor would ever come in contact with confidential response data.

Industry committee  The data centres had to be in Canada, and they were owned, operated, and run by government employees. The data was never going to leave Canada, and it was never going to be at any other facility than Statistics Canada's facility, which is exactly what the original—

Industry committee  The individual question is a subject of the next year, essentially, meaning by the end of 2017. As the releases come out, we'll get a better sense, because there is edit and imputation, and there is all sorts of work that needs to be done to actually arrive at some of those. That will be part and parcel of the data releases when we put out the metadata and some of the quality concerns around it.

Industry committee  First, thank you. It is an issue dear to me, and obviously it is an important issue for our country today. Many people suffer. We don't understand the characteristics of it, how to even measure or define it fully, or what the trends are. Anecdotally, I think we see that it's having an impact, obviously, in so many ways.

Industry committee  I would have to get that for you.

Industry committee  On the first one, I'll certainly get you the response rates on the short form and the long form, and the basis of that calculation—

Industry committee  I was actually a census manager back in 2006, when we contracted out the provision of hardware and software to the private sector in a very open, transparent competitive process, and I can assure you that the census was done by Statistics Canada employees and that nobody other than Statistics Canada employees ever came in contact with the responses.

Industry committee  I'm not sure I understand the question. The Government of Canada has very clear rules on access to information and what can or cannot be redacted. For anything that is not made available, there should be a good rationale. Obviously my going-in position is that unless we're going to be contravening a particular act or violating somebody's privacy in a way that is currently specified in the legislation, I want to make sure that I'm helpful and I'm providing information that makes sense to Canadians.

Industry committee  I'm not sure that the census is the best tool to meet this need.

Industry committee  We conducted a study a few years ago, the Internet Use Survey. If I'm not mistaken, 83% of the people had Internet access, and 97% of those people had high-speed Internet access. Yes, we have tools to measure the gaps. The numbers I referred to didn't include rural regions.

Industry committee  Yes, but we need to work with our colleagues from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, since that type of study is expensive. When we have needs that are a bit more specific, we need a fairly large sample size, which is costly. As I said earlier, we also need to find other methods.

Industry committee  Just for the record, I didn't say they have better data than we have. I think that was a preamble to a question that was asked of me. I think they have strengths and they have an environment where they've obviously evolved their system. Given their context, going way back, information was collected in registers and the populations of many of those countries were quite happy to have governments collect and keep it.