Information & Ethics Committee on April 1st, 2014

[Lu Fernandes]

Last year, we refused or revoked approximately 1,370 passport applications. Of those, about 1,000 were refused or revoked for reasons of criminality. These would have been for individuals who were incarcerated and who, from their point of incarceration—prison or jail—would have applied for a passport, or individuals who, subsequent to being incarcerated, had mobility restrictions applied. The great number of these 1,370 or so cases—1,000 of them—are from this group, this population.

Out of the total number, we have about 70 individuals who were refused or revoked passports on the basis specifically of identity fraud.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay. What happens to those 70? Are they referred to the RCMP, or what is the process for those cases? And what is the most common reason or what documents or whatever else are these people using to try to steal this identity? They are providing you with documents to prove who they are.

Do you understand my two questions there?

[Peter Bulatovic, Director, Investigation Division, Passport Program Integrity Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Yes.

In many cases, they have stolen the actual documents of an individual, be it a citizenship paper, a birth certificate, or a health card. They've actually stolen those documents and used them to apply for a passport.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

And what is the process for those 70 individuals, when you catch them doing this?

[Peter Bulatovic]

What happens in that process is that the application is stopped at the time the person applies, and we commence an investigation of the individual. The individual is advised that he or she is under investigation and is notified by a letter advising them that we cannot proceed with the passport application.

At the point when it comes to the identity theft part, in many cases that's the last we hear of the individual, obviously, and so the investigation stops at that point.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Is it reported to the individuals trying to pass off that identification that the pieces of information are stolen?

[Peter Bulatovic]

No, actually they are not advised, because the difficulty we have is that we don't know exactly how the documents were stolen. We don't know how the individual came into being in possession of those documents. In fact we don't know if the documents were linked to a friend of this individual whose identity was stolen. So it's a very grey area for us.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Would you refer that to the RCMP—this attempt by someone to represent someone they're not?

[Peter Bulatovic]

We would.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Do you know what the RCMP does with that once you...?

[Peter Bulatovic]

You would have to ask the RCMP that. It's a matter of whether they have the capacity to investigate single identity thefts.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Then at the end of it, you realize it...these 70 people and you pass it off to the RCMP and that's the end.

[Lu Fernandes]

Actually in a number of these cases where there is in fact an administrative investigation that happens within the branch, we can conclude the investigations ourselves. The most serious cases of identity fraud or theft we would refer to the RCMP.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

How often do you revoke a passport that has been issued, once you realize the person got it using identity that wasn't theirs?

[Peter Bulatovic]

That would be the case for the 70 that the director general Lu Fernandes referred to.

[Lu Fernandes]

Those would be part of the 70 that we would have come across.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay, but how many actually got a passport and how many did you stop in their tracks?

[Lu Fernandes]

I'm sorry, I don't have the breakdown of that number.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay. You say the common part of this was that people had stolen the documents to present to Passport Canada. Do you come across people trying to pass off forged documents to Passport Canada to try to obtain a passport?

[Peter Bulatovic]

Yes. During investigations we do.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Is that common?

[Peter Bulatovic]

Forgery is quite common.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

How do we protect against that? Is there anything that would help us protect against that?

[Peter Bulatovic]

From our perspective, one of the big investigative tools we use is facial recognition. When someone applies for a passport, the minute they apply for a passport their picture is run against all the pictures we have in our database. That's probably the first line of defence, if you want, in terms of passport fraud. In many of these cases, for example, the individual is applying using an identity that we already know. So we know that this person is trying to obtain a passport using a valid identity that we already know.

In other cases, especially with first-time applicants, we carefully look at the documentation and if we think there's something not right there.... For example, someone whose criminality is known to the police universe could be on our systems lookout list, so we may get a hit on the systems lookout list and we will look at that. In that instance, the passport application is not processed initially but instead comes to the investigation division for a second look.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You have 30 seconds, Scott.