Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, in terms of the fee established, we expect that to be very competitive with what both the U.S. and Australia charge. It's correct in terms of the Treasury Board process. We are still going through that process, and until that process is complete, we don't, in essence, have f

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's right. Our intention is to fully cost recover.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's a risk. We will identify the information that's being requested as part of the application to minimize those kinds of risks. For instance, a person has to submit not just their name but also other personal information and their passport number. The moment that discrepancy ha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As Mr. Linklater stated yesterday, really the driver for seeking an exemption from the User Fees Act was based on the fact that the User Fees Act was intended to promote transparency for fees set that affect Canadians. This is not the case in this instance. It is a fee that will

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As we indicated yesterday, we've made a commitment to work very closely with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. We will do so recognizing that we're not planning to implement the ETA until 2015. There is a significant amount of time to work to develop the responses to her co

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The databases that would be screened against through the automatic system would essentially be the ones that are currently used to screen temporary resident visa applications—the information that's held in our field operations support system, in our global case management system,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Generally, they were both very satisfied with the effectiveness of their programs. They certainly didn't express any regrets in having set up the programs in the first place. With the U.S., as I say, we got into a little bit more of the detail of their program, but certainly ther

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think our advice would always be that individuals, at the point where they're even contemplating travel to Canada, make the application for the eTA at whatever location they can get to. Essentially, they can make the application anywhere there's Internet access. That would defi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, it's like an individual who's working with a travel agent, for instance. If they don't already have their eTA, they could work with a travel agent, who would certainly have Internet access to apply for the eTA at that time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My team and I had the opportunity to visit both the U.S. team responsible for ESTA and the Australian immigration department to talk in depth with them about their experiences in setting up those two systems. We spent a very helpful full-day session with the U.S. Department of Ho

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's essentially the same kind of information that would be asked of a visa type of application. Essentially, the purpose of the information being requested is to determine an individual's admissibility to Canada. While we haven't designed the form at this point—and we'll figure

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our goal is to make it as “light touch” as possible. As I say, we haven't come to ground exactly on what information, but we hope to make it as user-friendly and as straightforward as possible.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I mentioned, we did go forward over the summer. We gave a presentation about our plans for the project, writ large, and had a very good two-way conversation that was an opportunity for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to raise any issues they had and to ask any questions

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Very briefly, then, as Mr. Linklater said, we met with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner over the summer and gave them an overview of the eTA as planned at that time. But it is true that the guts of the program will be implemented via the regulations, so we've undertaken to