Evidence of meeting #37 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was number.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
[Inaudible--Editor]—process would be helpful.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Diane Marleau
That's right.
I just wanted to make sure we said it correctly.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
As Mr. Kramp has noted, this particular audit is mostly—not completely, but mostly--a good news story. In fact, if we look at chapters 1 and 2, this audit follows from the audits that took place in 2003. As you said, kudos are due to the Liberal government who made sure there was action on a number of these reports and files. And we thank Mr. Kramp for having noted that for us.
Notwithstanding the good news, let's move on to a chapter of particular concern to me. It's the chapter dealing with social insurance numbers. There are approximately $70 billion in federal payouts annually based on social insurance numbers.
Is that correct?
4:10 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That's correct.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Of the 2.9 million excess social insurance numbers, 800,000 are active. You said 2.1 million are inactive—and let's just slide that over to the side for now. This means that 800,000 are in fact active.
Is that correct?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Let's just say that of the 2.9 million estimated to be excess, because of a comparison between the number of cards of a certain age group with the actual population in that age group—
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
It's an estimation.
There are 2.9 million excess, and the department has flagged 2.1 million as being dormant. So from this calculation, there are 800,000 that would appear to be excess.
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
But they can't go in and say, here are the 800,000 cards. It's an estimate of how many more there are in the system.
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
But you're right; those wouldn't be dormant cards, so they would have been used within a period of time.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So in Canada, conservatively speaking, we have potentially 800,000 active social insurance numbers that are fraudulent. If we take the percentage of 800,000 to the total number, we're looking at about 4% of social insurance numbers. If only 10% of those potentially fraudulent, active social insurance numbers, or only one in 10, are being used to access government programs, that translates into close to $300 million per year. If there's 100% take-up of those, which I doubt, it's potentially $3 billion. We're talking of hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and potentially running into the billions. I would say we're facing a situation that's a major problem for our treasury.
What is being done to seriously address this? I don't see anything that's seriously addressing this problem.
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I would agree with you that we are concerned about the quality of the information in the register. The government does not have a framework or a plan in place to ensure that quality systematically. It has been improving but it needs to be more rigorous than it is.
I guess the only comfort, if you will, is that access to those programs is not dependent solely on a social insurance number; the applicant has to provide other documentation or information, and there would be checks in those systems as well.
But I agree with you, this is a serious issue.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
That's cold comfort. We're talking of hundreds of millions of dollars, but my understanding is that the government—and this is now flagged—has no plans to do a statistically valid sampling of their register to nail down what we're actually dealing with here; we're talking of round numbers here.
Are there any plans whatsoever?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
To my knowledge, I'm not aware of any plans. But that would be something, I think, to follow up with the department.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So one component part is the potential fraud on the taxpayers of Canada of hundreds of millions of dollars. The secondary issue is that social insurance numbers are base documents.
Am I correct in that?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We would call them foundation documents, that's right, and they could be incorrectly used to create a false identity.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
We know there are 800,000 potentially fraudulent social insurance numbers floating around in the country that can be used to establish fake identities. Now, the previous government has done a tremendous job, as you've noted, on the passport regimes. There are a few things that still need to be addressed. The previous government also spoke with the provincial governments on addressing birth certificates and some of the issues around that whole process. A lot of that has been addressed.
In terms of the new security regime we're in, post-9/11, are there any plans to establish a new security regime for these foundational documents, social insurance numbers? Not just the 900 series, but for all of them.
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
In fact, the department has done a lot of work to improve the controls over the issuance of social insurance numbers. So that has strengthened that system. They are trying to establish the same links with vital statistics. They have one process, I believe, in place. I think it's New Brunswick where they are doing it. And they are planning to extend that to other provinces as well.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So if this government is serious about security concerns and fraud on the Canadian taxpayers, this would be an area that they should make a major investment in, to make sure that both of those concerns are addressed.
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I would just mention, actually, that they have signed agreements with Ontario and British Columbia. So they are working on establishing those links. I would recall that this is the fourth time we've issued these reports since 1998. It is a long-standing problem, and we would have expected it to be better by now.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
The ball's in our court, and as the Auditor General described, the problem didn't start overnight and it won't be fixed overnight. But we understand the problem, and we'll do our best.
Regarding the heritage buildings, this is obviously a concern for a lot of people, especially people in smaller communities, and even, for example, the Citadelle. The question was raised by the Bloc Québécois in the House last year with regard to the Citadelle and the status of that. Just remind this committee, if you could, which sites you looked at, and with particular attention to the Citadelle because I know that's of a particular cultural sensitivity in Ville de Québec.
