Official Languages committee  All I can say about that is that we have already given the committee members the questions that were used to enumerate rights holders in the post-census survey on the vitality of official language minorities, conducted in 2006. According to the advice we received, we needed between eight and 12 questions to measure the number of rights holders.

Official Languages committee  What's more, they have already been tested for the purposes of the 2006 survey. We can send you the questions. I put them to legal experts. For instance, I asked whether, in the question stating that the parent must have attended elementary school in French in Canada, it was also necessary to specify the duration of attendance.

Official Languages committee  You can't have one or two questions to enumerate rights holders under section 23 of the charter.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, I say it because they were already tested in 2006, with 5,000 respondents in Canada, outside Quebec. We didn't conduct some thoughtless survey. All we are saying is that, if the objective—which we take very seriously—is to fully enumerate rights holders in accordance with the three criteria set out in section 23 of the charter, we have to make sure that all the questions are asked.

Official Languages committee  If it's possible to make them shorter and ask fewer questions, we will.

Official Languages committee  We could send you some hypothetical questions, but they won't have been tested.

Official Languages committee  It is an excellent question. We are obviously looking at that very carefully. However, what you need to keep in mind and understand is that the order of questions is crucial, because the answers have to be compared. I will give you an example. If we are looking for something specific concerning part of the population, or certain municipalities, and we add three or four questions between two questions other concerned citizens will answer, we could end up with answers that may have been influenced by those new questions.

Official Languages committee  Yes, exactly.

Official Languages committee  The demographic weight is decreasing, but the number of people is increasing.

Official Languages committee  There is currently no enumeration of rights-holders in the census.

Official Languages committee  The only criterion we can use is in the census short-form questionnaire.

Official Languages committee  We do have legal advisors. We are currently creating a working group, an advisory committee. We will ensure to have trained lawyers on the committee. That way, they could inform Statistics Canada and give advice on the best way to word good questions and the appropriate way to answer them.

Official Languages committee  In general, wording is proposed for questions. We meet with focus groups to ensure that the questions are understood and to see how they are interpreted. As mentioned earlier, the way people understand a question depends on how the question is worded. Qualitative testing and focus groups help us ensure that people have understood the objective and the wording of a question.

Official Languages committee  The sample is large. If the sample consisted of a hundred or a few hundred people, the results may be different than if it consisted of several thousand people. The qualitative testing, which is conducted with tens of thousands of individuals, helps us ensure that the questions are understood and that the results are consistent.

Official Languages committee  We are already starting to look at the wording of questions. In 2018, we will conduct qualitative testing. As my colleague said, this is an ongoing process.