Foreign Affairs Committee on April 25th, 2012

[Lisa Pezzack]

As I mentioned before, there are two types of radio frequency identification tags. The kind of chip in this is what we call a proximity chip, so you have to be within 10 centimetres. The other type is a vicinity chip, which can be read from 30 metres away. That's a very different type of chip. Because those types of chips give off a signal at a greater distance, they are the ones you could put in a sleeve, or you wouldn't have the same type of information on them.

The chips here will have all of the information on page 2. Those chips normally have a number which refers you to a place in a database. Even if somebody skimmed the number on your NEXUS card, for example, all it would give them would be a number that would pinpoint them to a database, which they can't get into anyway.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

That's where your name, address and date of birth, etc., would be.

[Lisa Pezzack]

Yes.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move back over to Madam Laverdière, for five minutes.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much.

I have two brief questions, to start.

First, will the new passport that will be valid for a 10-year period have the same number of pages as the 5-year passport?

[Christine Desloges]

In fact, Canadians asked us to keep the costs as low as possible and that is why both the 5- and 10-year passports will have 36 pages each. Thus, rather than having one 24-page passport and another 48-page passport, we will have a 36-page passport for all users, which will allow us to rationalize stocks.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

That's fine, thank you.

I have another question. This concerns the matter of the transfer of consular fees, again. Could you possibly tell us how much money was collected in consular fees over the past year and transferred to the central fund? If you do not have the information now, you could send it to us later.

[Lisa Pezzack]

Well, I won't do the math in my head because that's probably not a good idea, but I would say roughly $25 times 4.8 million passports.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Times four million—?

[Lisa Pezzack]

4.8 million.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Okay, thanks.

Still speaking of the—

[Lisa Pezzack]

I'm sorry. Michel has just corrected me. We don't collect the consular fee on children's passports, so it wouldn't be exactly 4.8 million. We can get the number and send it to you.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much. That would be much appreciated.

Still on the issue of money, I see that the emergency travel document, which I think in the old days we called the white passport or something like that.... Or am I mistaken?

[Lisa Pezzack]

Yes, EP, the emergency passport.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

It is used normally for just one trip, usually to come back to Canada. I see that the fee is going from $31, including the consular fee, to $75. Do I understand that this one-trip passport will have a chip too?

[Christine Desloges]

No, it will not have a chip. However, we're looking at having to balance, again, the cost of the program abroad. So one of the things....

I am going to continue my answer in French.

One of the things Canadians told us is that they did not see the relevance of subsidizing services for Canadians abroad with the costs they pay here, in the country. Given that, we had to determine how to balance all of the costs of the program abroad over a 10-year period.

[Lisa Pezzack]

In addition, it costs more because we are providing emergency passports to people who have lost them or who had their money and ID stolen. This means that more in-depth identity checks have to be carried out in Canada before travel documents can be issued.

[Christine Desloges]

I should mention that we issue 4% of our passports abroad, but 30% of our security-related cases come up abroad. What we really have to consider are the children, first applications by adults, and persons whose passports were lost or stolen.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

I expect that there is an explanation, but I saw that the cost of identity certificates had gone from $127 to $260, so it has more than doubled.

[Christine Desloges]

Once again, the cause of that is the confirmation of identity. Identity confirmation is a lot of work. Through activity-based management, we see that the production of an identity certificate costs us about $700. A lot of very specific work is involved in carrying out that activity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. That's all the time we have for this round.

We're going to move back to Mr. Williamson, for five minutes.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Just on a quick point of reference, do you have any idea what it costs currently for a 10-year U.S. passport, with any consular fees they might have?

[Christine Desloges]

It's $139.

[Lisa Pezzack]

In the case of a first application.

They have a special security fee that they apply on the first application. So it's $113 for those.