Changes to census would be extremely difficult under new law, Bains says
OTTAWA — The federal minister in charge of Statistics Canada says newly tabled legislation to give the agency greater independence would make it difficult, but not impossible, for a future government to make changes to the census
Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains said the bill introduced last week would force the government to be open about what it was doing, forcing it to take the heat for any decisions instead of being able to point the finger at the statistical agency.
That’s what effectively happened when the previous Conservative government turfed the mandatory long-form census in favour of a voluntary survey in the 2011 count. Then-chief statistician Munir Sheikh resigned in protest, saying he hadn’t made the recommendation at all.
In a roundtable interview with The Canadian Press, Bains said the proposed law, had it been in place six years ago, would have made it “extremely difficult” for the Tories to replace the mandatory survey with a voluntary one because it would have had to publicly reveal any orders it gave the agency.