Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all of you, because you've made this very clear in terms of understanding what is going on and the bits and pieces. Clearly we're not the experts, but you have given expertise that will help us to come to a good decision.
What's been most bizarre or interesting, I guess, about all of this is the motivation behind eliminating unpaid work from the mandatory census and behind the changes. We know it's going to cost about $300 million more to do this.
We've heard from a number of perspectives. For example, Mr. Norris, you talked about the economic repercussions of eliminating the long-form census, in terms of lower business efficiencies, lower profitability, lower productivity. It seems that's a very significant negative. We've heard from Madame Taillon and Ms. Scott about the general impact on NGOs and service providers and those people who deliver the services to our community.
I come back to trying to understand what on earth the motivation is. The government, despite what we've heard this morning, has gone to considerable pains to point out that no one has ever gone to jail for not completing the long-form census, so it's clearly not a punitive thing.
We've also heard in testimony that the long-form census isn't perceived to be particularly intrusive; people are happy to participate, or at least there is a willingness. This collection of data goes back a long way, and you've said over and over again how essential it is, how important it is, not just to marketing but to the fabric of our society and making sure that what is needed is what is provided.
A number of things struck me, and I want to pursue a number of questions. I'll start with Madame Taillon.
You said that without the long-form census our society will be whiter, more middle-class, and less in need of government services. I want to underscore “less in need of government services”, because the mantra of “less government” seems to be the siren call that we've heard over and over.
What are the consequences of this? Could you give me a sense of it? I'm struggling again with motivation.