Is it automatic?
Evidence of meeting #70 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was service.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #70 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was service.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Acting Director General, Security Bureau, Passport Canada
Because it's an extremely complex process. We're investigating it. We've done a study that we submitted to the Auditor General when she did her second review in terms of how we would get that information.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I don't want to get too critical because I know you've been under a lot of stress and so on.
I remember the study in the U.S. on the post-September 11 situation, which involved the outcomes of poor risk assessment and security measures. They said one of the big problems was a lack of cooperation among different agencies and departments. It seems to me if passports are very important, then security is a big issue on that. If somebody becomes a security risk, I, for the life of me, have trouble understanding why that isn't automatically passed to your department and you check on it.
4:10 p.m.
Acting Director General, Security Bureau, Passport Canada
It is automatically passed to us. It's just not electronically passed. It's not a systematic process whereby they send us something via an electronic system. But they do inform us, and we have excellent cooperation with partner agencies in the security and intelligence field in Canada.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Acting Director General, Security Bureau, Passport Canada
Four weeks of classroom training and ten weeks of on-the-job training.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
How many examiners have we hired in the last year to deal with this surge problem?
4:10 p.m.
Acting Director General, Security Bureau, Passport Canada
We've hired 388 to 500 different employees of various classifications. Hiring passport officers is our most difficult challenge. Instead of hiring passport officers, we've changed our process so that passport officers can deal with more work during the day as we continue to hire them.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
You've made changes to the guarantor program.
I've practised law for 25 years in a small rural area. I used to hate that. I'm going to get it off my chest too. It used to tick me off. They'd take an hour to deal with language problems and everything else and then they'd put at the bottom that you were not allowed to accept a fee, after you'd spent an hour doing that. Only the government could do something like that, impose that on somebody in the private sector. I found it insulting. They usually paid you back with favours some other way in those small communities.
I always wondered why you had the list you had. It almost sounded like a list of the elite in the community, and lots of other people would have been just as qualified to guarantee some of the people you had on there.
I understand you have a new guarantee program, which really looks into trying to determine whether the guarantors are good screens or not. Maybe you could explain what you've done on that front.
4:10 p.m.
Gary McDonald Director General, Policy and Planning, Passport Canada
We've been looking at the guarantor program for some time, and you're quite right. Mr. MacKay recently announced changes to the guarantor program whereby any Canadian passport holder will be able to act as a guarantor for another Canadian who is applying for a passport. Certainly, we feel it expands the availability of guarantors. Nearly half the population now has a valid passport. Certainly, we feel we know far more about passport holders than we do about members of professional associations.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
You could get into a lot of trouble assuming all those people are reputable people.
4:15 p.m.
Director General, Policy and Planning, Passport Canada
Certainly, we feel it's going to allow us to make it simpler for Canadians. It improves and expands the checks we can make on the entire application process. That will be effective October 1.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Thank you, Mr. McDonald.
Mr. Christopherson, seven minutes.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Once again, thank you all very much.
To our guests from Foreign Affairs, welcome.
First of all, congratulations to Passport Canada on receiving a satisfactory response, for the most part. This is good. Kudos to you and congrats.
There are a couple of areas, of course, that will need a little bit of attention. Before I go to the report, flowing from Mr. Fitzpatrick's questions and the answers given, if I understand correctly, he asked about whether you cross over to check with the security people to see if they have anything on people in terms of risks, and if they are a security risk, they could be denied.
Does that mean if someone's on the no-fly list there's a chance they're not going to get a passport? Are there certain security reasons when somebody wouldn't, when are they, and how does that work? How does it tie into the no-fly list? If you can get a passport when you're on the no-fly list, but there are other reasons why you can't, why aren't those people on the list? Do you see what I'm getting at? Help me get it clear in my mind.
4:15 p.m.
Director General, Policy and Planning, Passport Canada
Certainly. The authorities for refusing a passport are outlined in the passport order. There are two instances. One is someone for whom there is an arrest warrant. Second is anyone who is on some type of controlled release program like parole or has any type of court order that limits their mobility. On the security side, the minister does have authority to refuse on security grounds. We have had cases, and some of those cases are before the courts.
There is no direct connection between the no-fly list and the current grounds on which a passport could be refused.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you very much for that fulsome answer.
I have to say it still leaves me with a little concern. I think that adds to the concern around this no-fly list: what is it, what is it not, and what's it going to do? Again, you can't get on a plane, but you can get a passport. Yet there are other crimes for which you can't get a passport, but you can get on a plane. It's very confusing. I'm not sure they got this right on the no-fly list.
Anyway, I want to move on. In the original report of 2005, there was exhibit 5.15 from the Auditor General:
Passport Canada should review, complete, and implement integrated human resource plans without delay.
This is the one I want to focus on. It wasn't just any recommendation. The Auditor General is very careful about words. She says “without delay”. Yet the review shows that at the end of the follow-up study, Passport Canada had just started developing an integrated human resource plan.
Why did you not take the advice of “without delay” and make this one of the top priorities, rather than seemingly leaving it to the bottom?
4:15 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Passport Canada
There are two main reasons for that. The first one is capacity. When it came to HR management, Passport Canada was to a certain extent struggling with recruitment, training, etc. Part of the HR strategy is to get a good picture of the situation at Passport Canada. So far a full assessment of the health of the organization has been completed: how many people we have, rate of absenteeism, equity, etc. Under management practices as well is whether we hire people full-time or on term, the use of overtime, and so on, in order to decide the best way to manage our staff.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I understand. The issue isn't what you're doing, but why didn't you do it quicker. It said “without delay”. Obviously you delayed. Why did you ignore the recommendation of the Auditor General?
4:20 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Passport Canada
I don't think we ignored it. I think the issue was a capacity issue.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Madam Fraser, can I have your thoughts on what we've heard?
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
With respect to the 2005 report, we thought the whole human resource planning was critical to go forward as there wasn't sufficient planning there. We believed it was an important issue. We noted that at the end of this follow-up audit they had started to do so. I guess we would have liked to have seen it earlier, and that's why we gave them an “unsatisfactory progress” on that.
4:20 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I want to underscore that. When recommendations are given a priority, unless somebody comes in to ask for an exception, we would expect you would treat it as a priority. That was disappointing. I would hope that in the future when it says “do it now”, you would begin to do it now.
With respect to another item:
Passport Canada should introduce quality assurance and control measures for its key entitlement operations to ensure that the Agency conducts proper internal checks on initial decisions and properly controls access....
We've had this issue earlier about access. That came up as unsatisfactory. I know you've touched on it once, but I'd like to hear a broader answer on the issue of access and why it remains unsatisfactory.
4:20 p.m.
Acting Director General, Security Bureau, Passport Canada
Our issuing system is antiquated. The kinds of controls the Auditor General was looking for don't exist in the system. We had to put in a number of manual controls, which were a band-aid. That was admitted to the Auditor General and her team when they came.
In the interim, our IT team has been designing automated controls for monthly reviews and deleting old access accounts to ensure that people don't have multiple accounts. It's all done automatically now, or it will be shortly. I believe that's being introduced in the fall.
It has been a process of getting it done. It wasn't quite as simple a task as we thought it would be because of the age of the issuing system.