Statement Congratulating Anil Arora on a Well Deserved Retirement

On March 22, 2024, Senator Omidvar gave a statement to congratulate Anil Arora on his retirement as Chief Statistician at Statistics Canada. Watch her speech:

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I rise to pay tribute to an extraordinary leader and public servant. Anil Arora is the Chief Statistician at Statistics Canada, which he has led for eight exceptional years. He retires on March 31 and leaves a transformed Statistics Canada in more ways than one.

First, under his leadership, the agency embraced new technologies. It was the first government agency to migrate its data to the secure cloud. It now uses satellite imagery, crowdsourcing, scanner data and wastewater sampling to provide us with an updated and more reliable picture of Canada and Canadians.

Second, in our time of need during COVID, Mr. Arora helped steer the agency through a spike in data needs to develop new protocols and processes that allowed Health Canada to establish contact tracing, which helped the senators in this chamber as we reviewed and debated our responses to the crisis.

Third, he led his agency in successfully implementing and completing the 2021 census, in spite of the fact that — because of COVID — the 2021 census program had to change course at the last moment and go completely contactless in order to meet pandemic protocols.

Because of his leadership, we now have new windows into life in Canada. He has led the Disaggregated Data Action Plan that we in this chamber often call for, but he has also led the Census of Environment, the Quality of Life Framework of Canada and the Business Data Lab. He has worked with Indigenous communities to help build data capacity and literacy and improve access to their own data.

As you can see, he is an alert and responsive leader, and I have experienced this first-hand. In 2021, I put out a challenge on Twitter to the charitable sector on gathering data. Mr. Arora saw this — clearly, this was a time Twitter worked — and through his leadership, a crowdsourced, voluntary survey was conducted. For the first time, we had an adequate picture and evidence upon which I could base my legislative proposal Bill S-279.

I was privileged to be in the room when Mr. Arora delivered the 2023 Manion Lecture. I urge you all to go online and watch him tell the story of Canada based on evidence and not opinion. To those who think Canada is broken, he says, “Look again.”

Mr. Arora leaves Statistics Canada in excellent shape. It is best in class among agencies like it in the world. Please join me in thanking Mr. Arora for his steadfast and inspired leadership for our country.