Public Accounts Committee on June 9th, 2009

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Fraser, congratulations for your report.

Passport Canada has accomplished extraordinary work during this period of serious crisis. Do we know approximately how many people still need to get passports? Practically everyone will have to carry a passport. You spoke of 4.3 million in 2008 and 6 million in 2009. Thus, there will not be many people left without passports after that date.

We heard about service to communities. Are there any regions of Canada with a lower demand for passports? If all those people decided all at once to apply for passports, we would need an emergency team to serve such regions of Canada. After opening the offices, hiring personnel and issuing all those passports, will some offices be closed and will there be any change in the number of staff? Have you already begun to plan for this?

[Leonard Edwards]

Due to the great number of details, I will ask Ms. Desloges to answer.

[Christine Desloges]

It is difficult to tell how many people will need passports, because those who apply for passports are people who want to travel. Quite a few people will never want to have a passport, because they are not interested in travelling. Our work is typically quite unpredictable.

Nonetheless, according to current observations, about 70% of people in Canada's big cities have passports. This applies to very large cities. We can also see that in the eastern part of Canada, there is a lower proportion of passport-carrying citizens. This means that the volume of passport applications in the east of Canada is currently on the rise.

Mr. Desnoyers, let me tell you about the passport clinics, how they work and how we make them available. First, a passport clinic, as far as we are concerned, consists in the delegation of a certain number of our employees, according to the type of municipality. Sometimes we can send two persons or five persons who stay there for a certain number of days. They study people's passport applications, they answer questions, they check the information in the applications for accuracy and they make a report of all the passport applications.

In some border cities, someone may suddenly need a passport. We do a follow-up and when we see that there is a high level of demand, we send in the passport clinics. Thus, we collaborate a great deal with municipalities. Members of Parliament also help us to spot the centres that really need help. In some cases—for instance, in the Quebec-Montreal corridor—we will be setting up several clinics in order to meet the demand.

I do not know if I have answered your question.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

You have answered it well.

Ultimately, once the crisis is over, what will you do?

[Christine Desloges]

Our organization can recover costs up to nearly 100%. In such a case, we must simply be diligent, envisage potential scenarios and start planning our moves.

We adjust our volume on a quarterly basis. We are currently redesigning our business model and our financial model. This constitutes a major task. We are also remodeling our governance structure and everything that has to do with it to find the most efficient ways of delivering service to the Canadian public.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Merci.

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Is there any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

No. Well, 10 seconds....

Mr. Shipley, you have five minutes.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses.

Ms. Desloges, I have a couple of questions. Again, we certainly, at our local offices, knew that it was a bit of a crisis, and I think you did too. I remember the minister at the time and the amount of time, input, and energy he actually put in at that time to help walk through it. In terms of the amount of time he actually spent in the offices, I think, working with staff to help rectify it....

I think from that, quite honestly, came some other good things. Maybe it isn't all our responsibility, but a lot of MPs now.... I put it out all the time that we help our constituents do and prepare passports.

That's working together. I think that's important for everyone, and we learn a lot more about it, quite honestly. Out of some things that are tough going, we often get some good things come out for all of us outside the passport division.

What percentage of Canadians actually have passports?

[Christine Desloges]

It's about 53%, and it depends on the region of the country.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

We were told, actually, when we were talking about WHTI a lot, the western hemisphere travel initiative, that we had a higher percentage than that. The number that seemed to be used was closer to 70%. I didn't know--I'd never heard, actually, from Passport Canada--whether that was accurate or not.

[Christine Desloges]

It depends on the region of the country, sir. In the large cities, it is around 70%.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Okay. Countrywide, though, it is in the 50% range, is it?

[Christine Desloges]

Yes.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

In the numbers you are processing, do you track the renewals as opposed to the new ones that are just coming on?

[Christine Desloges]

Yes, we do. I should say, though, that there's a part that's difficult to track, and that is that some people choose to come in person. They don't need to come in person when they renew, but they show up in offices anyway. In terms of channels, that's a little more difficult to account for.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Okay.

One thing that has come up, Mr. Edwards, involves discussions around security. You spoke in your presentation about a simplified renewal process. Was there ever any concern, when you simplified it in terms of the guarantor and those things, or a perception of concern, about a lack of security that would pop up because of that simplified process? I've heard this from some of the....

It seems to me that now it's not quite as tight as it used to be, in terms of what you had to go through to get it. We're trying to simplify it, but I think the other side of that is that it was all about the whole security issue. I wouldn't mind having your comments on this.

[Leonard Edwards]

When we made that decision, as I recall back in August 2007, there was a lot of concern that we not do something that would harm the security of the passport. After studying it very hard, we came to the conclusion that, in the end, dropping the guarantor policy that we had and simply substituting the one we have now wouldn't make that much difference.

I think that was the conclusion we came to, but I can always ask the experts who were there at the time.

[Jody Thomas]

We studied the renewals process, and it took us quite a bit of time to implement, because we had that concern about security and ensuring that we had enough information to make decisions. We made some significant process change in the analysis that the officers do to make the identity and entitlement decision on the individual. They do a comparison to the previous application. They make sure the photo hasn't changed that radically, so that the person looks the same in each of the passports, so we're ensuring that we're giving the passport to the same person the second time.

We're putting technological tools in place to improve that process before we issue the ten-year passport. We will use facial recognition technology to help us ensure that it is the same person. It's a very good, scientific method of making sure that the person is the same person we gave the previous passport to.

We use all the information we have in our database—which is quite significant—from the first application to ensure that the second application is as secure and that we're protecting the integrity of the process.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Speaking of photos, I always think that when you look like the photo on your passport, it means you need a vacation.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

At any rate, I'm wondering about the state of the art. What is the state-of-the-art processing plant in Gatineau? Was that sort of on the books, or was it just that it finished off, or...? What stage was it at when the crisis hit?

[Jody Thomas]

It wasn't on the books.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Okay.

It's amazing, Auditor General, but I think there are some departments that actually could take some very good lessons from the passport division of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Thank you. I guess I'm out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

We are back to Mr. Christopherson now for five minutes.