On December 7, the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, tabled a bill that proposes to reinforce Statistics Canada's independence through legislative amendments to the Statistics Act.

Targeted amendments will:

• enable the appointment of the Chief Statistician by the Governor in Council to a renewable term of not more than five years;
• create the Canadian Statistics Advisory Council to reinforce the independence, relevance and transparency of the national statistical system;
• remove from the Act the threat of imprisonment for those who refuse to respond to mandatory surveys; and
• allow the transfer of records for all censuses from 1911 to 2001 and from 2021 onwards to Library and Archives Canada after 92 years, and the transfer of records where consent was given for the censuses of population taken in 2006, 2011 and 2016 as well as the 2011 National Household Survey.

 The bill specifies that in the future, the Chief Statistician could only be removed for cause, which is meant to increase the independence of the office.

Read the news release here: New legislation to give Statistics Canada more independence

Read the Q&A here: Reinforcing Statistics Canada's Independence