Greetings All Sworn answers to written interrogatories of our plaintiffs in the Application for Judicial Review were served and filed on time and Lois Sparling has received the Justice Department's reply to undertakings given by StatCan and NA defendants. She reports that it was very boring reading. As reported previously, lawyers for Justice Canada refused to allow representatives of Chief Statistician Ivan Fellegi (Mary Ledoux) and National Archivist Ian Wilson (Greg Eamon) to answer many of the questions posed by Lois during her cross-examination of them. On Thursday 20 June 2002 Lois appeared in Federal Court to argue a motion that these representatives be compelled to answer her questions. The judge was interested in what the case was all about and remembered reading something about the census in the newspaper recently. He remarked that it appeared to him that since the issue in this case was strictly a question of legal interpretation, no cross-examination was really necessary (he's probably right there). He reserved his decision, which means he'll think about it and let us know. It is interesting that the judge felt the issue was strictly a question of legal interpretation when my cross-examination by the Justice Canada lawyers did not touch on that at all. The lawyer from the Justice Department told the judge and Lois (in lawyer talk, not plain English) that the Attorney General was working on negotiating a compromise/solution between Mr. Wilson and Dr. Fellegi. She told Lois the Attorney General was the neutral "honest broker", or words to that effect. We have mixed feelings on being told that the Attorney General is a neutral "honest broker" in this. The new Attorney General, the Hon. Martin Cauchon, is the MP from Outremont, Quebec, and is one of those who has never responded to our questions of support. In all probability he is not "up" on what has been happening regarding this issue for the past several years. As such he will likely be guided by his advisors, and in particular by Dr. Fellegi who, by no stretch of the imagination could be consider to be neutral in this issue. We will advise, as we have done before, that if the compromise/solution being considered bears any resemblance to the so-called "compromise solution" already proposed by Dr. Fellegi, it will be unacceptable to the genealogists, historians and people of Canada. There is already a compromise, or balance, mandated by law in the form of the Access to Information and Privacy Acts, and Regulations to the Privacy Act. Legislators deliberating these statutes provided that in return for providing information to census, that information would not be publicly accessible for a period of 92 years. There are currently 235 years of Census records for what is now Canada, up to and including those for 1901, available without restriction 92 years after collection. The only solution acceptable will be to allow, as provided by the ATI and Privacy Acts, unrestricted access to Post 1901 Census records 92 years following collection, on exactly the same basis as those records up to and including 1901 are currently available. We must continue our efforts to advise our elected and appointed representative that is is what the people want. Happy Hunting. Gordon A. Watts [email protected] Co-Chair, Canada Census Committee Port Coquitlam, BC http://globalgenealogy.com/Census en français http://globalgenealogy.com/Census/Index_f.htm