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After the report was published, Arora said in a statement that the traditional ways of gathering information, “are no longer sufficient to accurately measure Canada’s economy and societal changes.”

Arora added that more than three-quarters of purchases are made online by Canadians, and that Statistics Canada “has to have access to these data” in order to provide quality statistics in certain areas, such as housing and debt.

The chief statistician continued to defend the need for quality stats on Thursday, noting there is wide use of the agency’s information. He noted that, “while the notion of 500,000 addresses may seem large,” there are more than 14 million households in Canada.

Arora also stated at the end of October that they had already worked with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada during the planning of the project, but that he had invited the commissioner to provide additional recommendations on the effort.

Soon after, the privacy commissioner’s office announced an investigation into Statistics Canada, saying they had received complaints about the agency “and its collection of personal information from private sector organizations.”

But when the privacy commissioner appeared before the committee on Thursday, the watchdog said the potential size of the pilot project was relatively new knowledge.

“Before these complaints, we had discussions about administrative data collection in general, about certain pilot projects in general, but not about numbers until very recently,” said Daniel Therrien, the privacy commissioner.