Hon. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker,
The current mandatory short form census and the census of agriculture still have a potential penalty of jail time two years after the government argued it was totally unacceptable to send someone to prison for not filling out their census.
The government’s primary fearmongering about the mandatory long form census was potential jail time. Will it stop the hypocrisy and immediately remove jail time from every other type of census?
Hon. Christian Paradis (Minister of Industry and Minister of State (Agriculture), CPC):
On the contrary, Mr. Speaker,
We took action on this file and I agree with my colleague, it is unacceptable to send people to jail for not filling out a census.
We improved the system, and as I said now, the data would provide useful and usable data for users.
If members opposite want to ask more questions concerning methodology of the organization, they have to address them to Stats Can.
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