Date : June 1, 2000 To : Ms. Adele Turner >From : Ted White, MP (North Vancouver) Subject : Post 1901 Census Dear Ms.Turner: I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your email message of May 28, 2000 regarding the release of post 1901 Census information. In your email message you ask if I am, "as an elected Member of the House of Commons of the Parliament of Canada, voting for or against a Bill supporting the release to the public, of Post 1901 Census records, 92 years after they were recorded?" Actually, at this time there is no legislation before Parliament to vote on with respect to this issue. There is, however, a Private Members Motion which has been put forward by a Canadian Alliance MP, Jason Kenney. M-160 urges the Government to do everything possible to ensure that the post 1901 Census records are released some time after 2003, and I expect to be voting in favour of this Motion if, or when, it comes to a final vote. Although I will be voting for M-160, I feel that it is important to point out that a Private Member's Motion should not be confused with a piece of legislation, or a Government Bill, because a motion does not automatically produce a law when passed. However, the fact is, tabling a Motion in the House is the only means by which the Official Opposition can encourage the Government to take action on a specific issue. For all practical purposes though, passage of M-160 is unlikely to have any effect whatsoever on the Government and I suspect that Minister Manley will simply continue to defer the making of any decision regarding census records until after the next election. Yours truly, Ted White, MP

Greetings All. My thanks to Adele for passing this message on. I find Mr. White's response surprizing in a couple of respects, the first of which is this is the first indication I have seen that he was likely to vote in favour of anything to do with accessing census records. Myself and others have had considerable correspondence with Mr. White, much of which is viewable in his correspondence log on the MP's Scoreboard, and most of which was not in favour of release. It would be nice however if he would get up to date on what Bills regarding this matter have been put forth in the House of Commons. In addition to Jason Kenney's Motion M-160, MP Mac Harb has had a motion on the go for some time, and as I recently posted Murray Calder has presented a Bill that I expect will mirror that of Senator Lorna Milne's Bill S-15. Mr. White has made one point that may be of considerable interest to us and that is his reference to the possibility that Minister Manley may be trying to defer a decision until after the next election. While I personally do not feel Manley is deliberately delaying a decision the fact remains that there are not many sittings of the house left before the summer recess and the odds do not favour that decision coming down before the recess. It is close to the time that we must step up our campaign of letters and email to encourage something to be done prior to an election. If the report of the Expert Panel has come down in favour of release then it would be an opportune time for us to encourage Mr. Manley to accept Murray Calder's Bill and make it a government Bill which would likely pass without much problem. If the report of the Expert Panel does not come down in favour our campaign will have to be stepped up because of that.. Happy Hunting. Gordon ----- Original Message ----- From: Muriel M. Davidson <davidson3542@home.com> To: <CANADA-CENSUS-CAMPAIGN-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, 04 June, 2000 10:15 PM Subject: [CCC-L] Is the colour GOLD, GREEN or BLUE??? Date : June 1, 2000 To : Ms. Adele Turner >From : Ted White, MP (North Vancouver) Subject : Post 1901 Census Dear Ms.Turner: I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your email message of May 28, 2000 regarding the release of post 1901 Census information. In your email message you ask if I am, "as an elected Member of the House of Commons of the Parliament of Canada, voting for or against a Bill supporting the release to the public, of Post 1901 Census records, 92 years after they were recorded?" Actually, at this time there is no legislation before Parliament to vote on with respect to this issue. There is, however, a Private Members Motion which has been put forward by a Canadian Alliance MP, Jason Kenney. M-160 urges the Government to do everything possible to ensure that the post 1901 Census records are released some time after 2003, and I expect to be voting in favour of this Motion if, or when, it comes to a final vote. Although I will be voting for M-160, I feel that it is important to point out that a Private Member's Motion should not be confused with a piece of legislation, or a Government Bill, because a motion does not automatically produce a law when passed. However, the fact is, tabling a Motion in the House is the only means by which the Official Opposition can encourage the Government to take action on a specific issue. For all practical purposes though, passage of M-160 is unlikely to have any effect whatsoever on the Government and I suspect that Minister Manley will simply continue to defer the making of any decision regarding census records until after the next election. Yours truly, Ted White, MP