Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think I'd like to head down a little bit of a different track in terms of our conversation today, to something we haven't chatted about it.
When the decision was made to go from mandatory to voluntary, I certainly had phone calls to my office, and not an insignificant number of phone calls. I certainly heard things on both sides of the issue, no question, but some of these phone calls were to say thank you. And the stories they had, whether they were single moms or elderly gentlemen.... In a number of cases, they were quite frightened. They had been picked for the long-form census. They were getting knocks on their doors at eight o'clock at night or when they were getting ready for their children to go to school, and they were feeling very frightened by the process.
I've always thought that a carrot is better than a stick, certainly in the profile of the conversation around the census and the importance of the general household survey. But would we not be better to spend our energy and effort...? We have the people who are hired to collect the data, who are knocking on doors saying there is a $500 fine. And no, we never have fined anyone. We have never sent them to jail, but those possibilities have certainly been made very apparent to the people. A carrot rather than a stick.... This not going to be supporting people if we move this forward, because there is manpower that is focused on bringing these results in. I don't think we can completely discount these people who feel that way, and the very frightening experience that they've had.
So we need a carrot rather than a stick.