That is an excellent question. After the events of September 11, 2001, we had to strengthen our security procedures. First, we brought back to Canada all of the production of Canadian passports that was being done all over the world, in order to have better control over the production of the passport, which is a document. Secondly, we introduced facial recognition technology which allows us to compare the photo of the new applicant with what we have in our database. We now have 21 million files. We have to confirm whether the person making the application is really the same person as the one we have in our databases, or whether we are dealing with identity fraud, which is an increasingly frequent problem. We have made the passport issuing procedure more secure. Naturally, there has been an increase in the number of applications with the IVHO, or WHTI in English, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which you are all familiar with. Five years ago, there was an increase in passport requests when the American government started requiring that Canadians travelling to the United States have a passport.
This slowed us down a bit but allowed us to develop, in 2009, a pilot project for the issuance of ePassports for special and diplomatic passports. We issued 50,000 ePassports and so we were able to test the electronic passport technology and determine the most effective ways of implementing it. We also had to look for funding for the issuance of ePassports. We dipped into the 2008 and 2010 budgets for a government credit margin so as to begin implementing the electronic passport. We are in a consultation period under the User Fee Act, which will allow us to reimburse that loan. We are systematically rolling out this ePassport. I can assure you that we are doing everything in our power to accelerate its implementation.