Industry committee  Yes. I don't believe that the government should fine Canadians to disclose personal information. I certainly don't think that the government should threaten jail or put people in jail for not disclosing personal information. Again, this has nothing to do with whether or not thos

Industry committee  Well, again, I think that's an empirical question. I think we do have some research from the U.S. that does show the response rate goes down, as Mr. Drummond indicated. I'm also not too concerned about the decrease in the response rate. The U.S. Census Bureau actually came to th

Industry committee  I certainly agree with the government that it should not be mandatory. We've heard a lot about the fact that no one has been thrown in jail. We don't know exactly how many fines have been paid. But it's certainly not the case that you would judge this by how many people were thro

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Bernier. I certainly can explain. I do believe that the long-form census is too intrusive. If you look down the list of questions, they are on everything from a person's sexual orientation, whether they live with a same-sex common-law spouse or an opposite-sex sp

Industry committee  From time to time, yes, we do use data from the long-form questionnaire. Of course, we don't know exactly what data will be available from the voluntary survey, but it's not critical to our mandate. Certainly we do a lot of our own surveys, especially on waiting lists in hospital

Industry committee  No, I certainly don't think it will be the end of the world. Look, if the information is needed and people are willing to pay for the information, we can certainly collect the information on a voluntary basis. Now, as far as planning goes, certainly there are some departments w

Industry committee  Thanks for having me.