Information & Ethics Committee on April 3rd, 2014

[Morgan Currie]

Madam Chair, I'm happy to report that our relationships are ongoing and frequent. Of course, one of the big issues of mass marketing fraud is how the criminals adapt to changes and take advantage of new technologies, but we frequently participate in these law enforcement groups and in these international fora, so we feel as though the information is being adequately shared among the agencies through those fora.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

You talked about the criminals adapting, and they're obviously very clever people. Do we hire any of those kinds of folks to try to stay one step ahead of the bad guys, you know, to give somebody a chance? “Okay, if you were going to do this, how would you do it?” Do we hire anybody to do that sort of stuff?

[Morgan Currie]

I can say that we have to keep our own technological methodologies of detection of such crimes at a high level. I don't think we have anybody or a practitioner like that in our employ; I might be surprised, but I hope not. But certainly we look at social media sites for information or technological tools, and our cooperation with law enforcement agencies and even consumer protection agencies help us to attract information and to obtain evidence. I think we're on top of it and staying on top of the trends.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Superintendent Cormier, you mentioned education. Obviously, educating the public is pretty important. Who should be doing that education, other than generically everybody? What role does government have to play in that education?

[Supt Jean Cormier]

Actually, it plays quite an important role. As a matter of fact, one of the strategies against identity theft is currently being led by Treasury Board. They are in the process of developing the guideline on identity assurance. It's at the draft stage.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, I believe that it's everybody's responsibility to be aware of it, but the prevention, obviously through publicity such as fraud prevention month, was part of it. The CAFC operates almost like a peer-to-peer type process. When people call to report that they have been the victim of identity theft, there is a person at the other end of the line who will sympathize with them and counsel them on how to prevent that from happening again.

There are also different practices in place that do focus on education and prevention, but I believe the Government of Canada has an important role to play in it. Completing the strategy would likely be a big part of it.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Obviously, the private sector buy-in is important on that too, because they're protecting themselves. Are there any challenges with private sector buy-in or public sector buy-in that are causing difficulty?

[Supt Jean Cormier]

The buy-in is not the difficulty. Essentially, the difficulties and challenges that we face in regard to working with the private and public sectors and law enforcement are about the ability to share private information in certain instances, which are limited by privacy laws, obviously, and the need for the businesses that we deal with to respect client privilege.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Following on that, obviously, the Privacy Act is there for a reason and that obviously gets in the way sometimes. How much of an impediment is it? I mean, how long does it take to get around the Privacy Act legally to get the kind of information you need? I know that would vary depending on the case.

[Supt Jean Cormier]

There's no way to get around the Privacy Act to get information—

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I mean working through the Privacy Act.

[Supt Jean Cormier]

To get it legally, obviously, if we're dealing with a particular investigation, we would have to go through the normal processes of obtaining court orders to obtain information that we may need for our investigation. Right now, there is certainly an appetite from the private and public sectors to share more information with law enforcement, and certainly for intelligence and prevention purposes, to build a database of people who are being victimized and suspects are being identified. There is more of an appetite there for that. Currently, there are relationships that are in the process of being developed at the CAFC that are improving that.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Sticking with the Privacy Act aspect of it, if somebody comes forward and wants to share the information with you, the Privacy Act doesn't get in the way of that, does it?

[Supt Jean Cormier]

No. That is correct.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Bill S-4 came into force in 2010, which added some new Criminal Code offences that target aspects of identity theft, some that were not, up until then, covered in the legislation. Has that had a positive impact at all on the ability to prosecute those kinds of things, that you're aware of? Now, the numbers obviously will continue to go up just because of volume.

[Supt Jean Cormier]

It has had a positive impact. I'm going to give you some of the numbers that I have here. In 2012, there were 2,813 cases reported, out of which 1,024 resulted in related charges. I don't have the comparative from the previous year, but I know from experience that it resulted in an increase.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Patricia Davidson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hawn. Your time is up.

We now move to Mr. Andrews, for seven minutes.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

One of the things that we're studying with identity theft is we're trying to get a better understanding of how this identity theft is happening so that we can look at ways to probably prevent it or help educate people.

Mr. Cormier, in your opening statement you talked about opening some 3,411 occurrences relating to identity theft. Do you have any breakdown on what types of identity thefts that these may be?

[Supt Jean Cormier]

I'm going to check. Sorry, no, I do not have it here with me. I have the total statistics from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre right now and the total statistics for the RCMP. I don't have the breakdown.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Could you give us some idea of how people are doing this type of identity theft?

For example, yesterday we had Passport Canada in here, and I'll ask a question on that in a minute. They said a lot of things that were given to them were stolen documents and people were trying to acquire an identity through stolen documents. Is that a common way that people are trying to create a different identity?

[Supt Jean Cormier]

Yes, in my opening remarks, as well as in my partner's opening remarks, we talked a lot about cybercrime that takes place now because of the advance in technology.

The phishing scam is still very much a concern, obviously, where people receive e-mails soliciting personal information, bank information, and credit card information, pretending to be a financial institution, for example. That is still very common.

Theft from mail is still a concern. Personal papers that are stolen from the mail system can result in identity theft. As a matter of fact, Canada Post was one of the partners in developing the strategy here for the RCMP along with a number of other partners. You mentioned Passport Canada. Passport Canada has one of the best systems in the world in preventing fraud with their system that they have in place. Passport Canada should likely be looked at as an example of how to implement systems to prevent fraud.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Yesterday they said, I think it was in 2013, they had 70 cases of people trying to obtain a passport through an identity that was not their own. They then passed that information on to the RCMP. What do you do when you get that information from, for example, Passport Canada when someone tries to obtain a different identity?

[Supt Jean Cormier]

It's considered a fraud, and we would investigate it as a fraud-type investigation. Obviously, we'd investigate what the intent was behind it, the reason. It could be an illegal immigrant in Canada. It could be somebody wanting to engage in other criminal offences. We have to look at every possible angle that is involved. It starts from receiving the complaint, to taking the statement from the witnesses, to following the leads for the suspect.

Sometimes when they report matters to us, because they only have the false identity, and they cannot provide us with the true identity of the person, so sometimes it becomes a challenge to identify who the culprit was. But where we can trace the suspect, certainly we fully investigate those cases as fraud.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

How do you tell someone that someone tried to use their identity? Is there a process in place, if you come across someone trying to pass themselves as someone else, for telling the actual Canadian or person that their identity has been compromised? Is there a format or is that a priority to try to let the person know that their identity was trying to be compromised?

[Supt Jean Cormier]

It forms part of the course of the investigation if there is actually another person's identity that's being used fraudulently. Yes, we will advise the victim that they have been the victim of fraud, and that somebody else has tried to use their identity.

We provide them with advice as well as to the impact it may have on them, because if the person gets detected trying to use a person's identity, that identity may have been used for other purposes unbeknownst to law enforcement or unbeknownst to the victim. There is a need to have contact with the victim. It's part of the normal process of the investigation, and also, to obtain a witness. That person becomes a witness essentially, as well as a victim, to say that the person was not the person who tried to get a passport, or tried to get a bank loan, or whatever the situation was.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Once a person is a victim, what steps do they need to take to try to make sure they can reclaim their identity if it's gone to a certain point? Do you see a lot of victims saying that it's been a year and it's still impacting them?