StatsCan kills census deal over privacy concerns
Firm has close ties to U.S. defence interests
Joe Paraskevas
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, May 09, 2004
The federal government, bowing to public and political pressure, has broken a contract with the Canadian arm of U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin for work on the next national census.
The New Democratic Party and other organizations had lobbied the government for months to drop its plans to have the Kanata-based company provide services for the 2006 national survey and a mini-census, out of concerns private information of Canadians could be used by an organization with close ties to United States defence interests.
The director of the 2006 census, which is produced by Statistics Canada, confirmed Friday those concerns drove the government to pull out of its agreement with Lockheed Martin.
"There were a number of concerns expressed, perception issues around confidentiality and privacy," said Anil Arora. "We wouldn't want to subject even the slightest perception that the census was in any way subject to any of those concerns, so to do away with that we decided that it would be Statistics Canada employees that would actually handle and process the census questionnaires in 2006."
A spokesman for Lockheed Martin could not be reached for comment.
The next census will involve about 13.6 million households and will be the first to be offered online. About 20 per cent of respondents are expected to file electronically, Mr. Arora said.
Public concerns were unwarranted, he added, because census work would be conducted under security in Statistics Canada facilities with no external connections through which information could leak.
But the NDP exulted in the government's reversal.
"Hats off ... to all those who persuaded Statistics Canada that the integrity of the census was at stake," said NDP parliamentary leader Bill Blaikie in the House of Commons.
The government would sustain a penalty "in the tens of thousands of dollars," for breaking the second phase of its three-phase contract with Lockheed Martin, Mr. Arora said.
The phase involved the conducting of a mini-census of 300,000 homes and used as a preparatory step before the 2006 main census. The government would not be penalized for breaking the third phase of the contract, which actually involved the main census.
The first phase of the contract -- in which baselines for the census were established -- has already been completed.
Lockheed Martin had been selected in 2001 among other bidders, marking the first time census software had been purchased from the private sector.
Electronic data processing could cut up to three months off compilation of census figures, Mr. Arora said, meaning the 2006 results could be ready by January 2007