Public Accounts committee  Let me answer. The procedures are essential identical. As for the booklets, all Canadian passports are issued in Canada, except the temporary passport that is available to those who urgently need one abroad. However, the regular five-year passports are all printed in Canada and t

Public Accounts committee  Yes. The announcement was that we would produce a ten-year e-passport by 2011.

Public Accounts committee  From a technology point of view, there is an international standard for e-passports. It was developed by the member states, Canada included, of ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN specialized agency headquartered in Montreal. There are about 60 countries now

Public Accounts committee  That's right.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. The electronic passport looks very much like a standard passport. It has a chip embedded in either the front or the back cover. Different countries approach it differently. It has the data, as Madam Desloges explained. It certainly makes the document itself more tam

Public Accounts committee  It should be stated that the $57 figure you referred to was our unit cost last year. At this point, Passport Canada is losing $7 for each passport it issues.

Public Accounts committee  Seven dollars. We have been dipping into the surplus accumulated over previous years, as Mr. Edwards mentioned earlier on, because we operate with renewable funds and we can use the surplus we had in the bank to pay off the deficit. In terms of... Well, I will keep it at that.

Public Accounts committee  I think it is the Revolving Funds Act. It exists, and a number of government programs are funded on a revolving fund basis.

Government Operations committee  That's not the only reason. We mustn't forget the events of September 11, 2001. Since the attack on New York, overall security has been reinforced. Identity management systems are even more important today than they were seven or eight years ago. We must also recognize that the n

Government Operations committee  There are three per month.

Government Operations committee  There's no doubt that migration patterns and illegal migration are problems everywhere in the world. Our processes are almost entirely identity related. Is the person applying a citizen and therefore entitled to a passport? When a person is claiming an identity, does that identit

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Those are all ten-year passports, actually.

Government Operations committee  A U.S. passport is $100 U.S., about $102 or $103 Canadian.

Government Operations committee  That is their total fee. These are some of the fees: $100 U.S. for a U.S. passport; 72 pounds for a U.K. passport, which is $145; approximately $170 Canadian for an Australian or New Zealand passport. Those are the ones that I know off the top of my head. If you'd like a more co