Finance Committee on May 17th, 2012

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Okay.

[Peter Edwards]

These amendments deal with protecting information, and the Information Commissioner deals with ensuring that Canadians have access to information about their government and their programs. So we didn't have a reason to consult the Information Commissioner.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

You touched on this in your opening remarks, but I'd invite you to expand on the impacts on the provinces and territories of these changes.

[Peter Edwards]

The provinces and territories won't be so much impacted, because what this does is it simply makes clear an authority for us to share information as needed to support programs that we're working with in the provinces and the territories. Work that has been going on should continue as it has in the past.

What it does explicitly is it adds the word provincial “activity”. Before it talked about provincial “laws”. Some provincial programs, such as the work they do on labour market development agreements, will not necessarily have a specific law in the province related to that activity. This adds the words “activity” to make our authority clearer. And any of those activities will have to be listed in federal regulation to ensure that protections are in place.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

The whole objective here—I presume it's to save money? Or is it just to clean up the multiple codes it had?

[Peter Edwards]

I would say it is the second of the two. The privacy protections that exist and that we administer have developed over the years as the department has gone through various manifestations and as our programs have been developed and come online. In 2012, it makes sense to harmonize the codes to ensure consistent applications to privacy protection.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

So you don't expect to see any savings?

[Peter Edwards]

No.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

It's not the goal.

[Peter Edwards]

It will make some of our work easier. My colleague and I may spend an hour on something rather than two hours, so we save a little bit.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

There are no further questions on this division, so I want to thank you for being with us today and for responding to our questions.

We'll now call the next set of officials for division 8, “Social Insurance Number Cards”. That's on page 235 of the budget.

Do you have a point of order, Mr. Hoback?

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Chair, we've been here for a couple of hours now. Could we break for two minutes to return phone calls?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I will suspend to allow colleagues to take a bit of a break. We will come back in two minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'll call this meeting back to order. This is the 60th meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance. We are continuing our study of Bill C-38 and we are in part 4 at division 8, “Social Insurance Number Cards”.

I want to welcome Mr. Boyd to the committee and ask him if he can give us an overview of his division, and then we'll have some questions from members.

[Peter Boyd, Director General and Departmental Security Officer, Integrity Services Branch - Internal Integrity and Security, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This particular division of the bill runs from clause 304 to clause 314.

In the context of the presentation you just heard from my colleagues about moving various pieces of the EI Act into the departmental act, the text you see in these clauses reflects that move because it is happening at the same time; it makes some additional changes to some of that text to deal with the social insurance number card. It's been proposed to eliminate the production and issuance of the social insurance number card as of March 2014, so we would stop printing the card at that point. This would yield savings in the range of $1.5 million.

Fundamentally, we don't require the card for service delivery. It's the number that is the key piece within our service delivery framework. The card is merely a reminder of that number, so as of March 2014 we'll be replacing the card with a letter, which is more efficient and easier for us to print.

That's the main piece within this section. There are also some consequential changes to some other pieces of legislation relating to the Wheat Board, the Farm Income Protection Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and the Wage Earner Protection Program Act because they all make mention of the card. So those changes are strictly to reflect that.

Clause 307 talks about money, and it merely maintains the source of funding for the social insurance register and card, the program around the social insurance number. It maintains the status quo from what was before, recognizing the change in the act.

There's also a consequential change in the Canada Pension Plan Act, as it also makes reference to the card and actually requires the card to be presented to an employer within 60 days. So that has been changed to say that the number must be given to the employer within 60 days for the employer to then report it on the various documents on which they are required to do it.

At high level, that is what this section is proposing.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. Thank you very much for that.

We'll start avec M. Caron, pour cinq minutes.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

The question I will ask is a major concern for me. Subsection 28.2(5) states that the commission “[...] may make available any information contained in the registers [...] for the accurate identification of persons and for the effective use by those persons of Social Insurance Numbers [...]”.

Which guidelines determine to whom the commission may disclose that information?

[Peter Boyd]

Yes, this is an existing provision, so this doesn't change because of this amendment.

The commission is able to make information available for the purpose of effective identification of the client and for the effective use of the social insurance number. Those are two terms that give the high-level guidelines, and then any decision the commission makes is also guided by the lesser legislation that they talked about previously around privacy, the Privacy Act, as well as a number of other acts of Parliament that provide authority for that particular program to use the social insurance number. For example, the Income Tax Act authorizes CRA to use the social insurance number, and therefore disclosing that information to CRA for those purposes is allowed under the act. So it's in that way.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I was under the impression that there was already a social insurance register in place, since we receive our cards. I thought the information was compiled somewhere. I am surprised to hear there isn't a register.

Which pieces of information will be deemed necessary for inclusion in the register? I imagine the number and the person's name will be required, but I'd like to know the extent of the information it will contain so that a person's identity can be determined.

[Peter Boyd]

The social insurance register does exist. It was created in 1964, when the social insurance number was originally created. That does not change in this amendment. That is very much the status quo.

I don't have an exhaustive list here, but the information contained in that register is obviously the name, the address we sent the letter or card to, the date of birth, gender, and those sorts of pieces. As well, there a few administrative things, such as whether the person has been declared dead or whether they've not used it in several years. A lot of administrative flags are also in there.

That's the nature of the information in the register, and it has been for many years.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I just want to follow up on one point.

My understanding is that one of the reasons for doing this is for security and identity theft reasons. It's an issue I've worked on for years. Is my understanding correct, Mr. Boyd?

[Peter Boyd]

Yes, that is correct. The social insurance number card is simply a piece of plastic with your name and number punched into it and some ink. An enterprising grade 12 student could do it in his or her parent's basement without the parents even knowing. It doesn't provide any security. Moving away from reliance on the card provides benefits from an identity theft perspective.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

From Service Canada's point of view, what would your advice be on how to keep the document secure electronically? I'm also thinking of seniors. Many seniors still keep things in paper form. Do you have any advice, from Service Canada's point of view, on where Canadians should keep their SIN number and on how they should keep it secure?

[Peter Boyd]

Certainly.

In fact, on the Service Canada website, under the heading “Social Insurance Number”, there are, in fact, a couple of booklets. One is specifically on protecting your information, and one is a code of conduct, we call it. It's not just about how individuals are supposed to use social insurance numbers but also about how businesses and government should use the social insurance number. It recommends that people not carry it in their wallets. A safety deposit box is a good place for it.

Don't give it to someone unless you actually need to. For example, if you're applying for EI, you must provide it, because that's what it's for. You hear a lot of examples of people being asked to give it for renting a house or for getting a card to rent a video at your local store. I guess we don't do that anymore. Those are not the reasons for which the number was created, so we advise Canadians to be cautious about using it in that way.

That information is readily available on the website.