Government Operations Committee on Feb. 20th, 2007

[Aline Vienneau]

Madam Chair, the Treasury Board policy allows for the disposal of heritage buildings. In the chapter, it—

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

It allows for what?

[Aline Vienneau]

It allows for the sale and or the destruction of buildings. In the chapter, we do not object to that, in that when you have a building—Take for instance the hangers in Borden, on the military base, there are a number of them. It may happen that the Department of National Defence decides it no longer needs these hangers and does not want to invest in their upkeep. It is to be expected that in some cases we may not conserve all buildings. In that case, Treasury Board's policy allows for their destruction. What we are asking for is to specify under which conditions destruction is allowed and to determine what the government wants to keep.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Is the journalist right in saying that the West Block and the East Block are among those buildings?

[Sheila Fraser]

If I'm not mistaken, it has to do with the memorial buildings?

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Yes the East and West blocks.

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, but it is the building on Lyon Street, I believe. When we go underneath—

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Yes that's right.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Oh! All right.

[Sheila Fraser]

It wouldn't be the building on—

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Not the buildings on Parliament Hill?

[Sheila Fraser]

No.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

All right, I won't have to move tomorrow morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

No, it's on the other side of the street from Parliament buildings.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

All right. I was considering buying them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

In any event, that's good.

We'll continue. Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to return for a moment to the passport question, although I need to preface my remarks by saying that, as in Madame Thibault's case, it's not a big issue in my riding, because I'm very fortunate to have a passport office in Kitchener.

In our instant society, there are increasing demands to have rapid turnaround, but I don't think any Canadians are willing to sacrifice the security aspect that obviously needs to be a big part of issuing passports. I think proper validation and guarantor checks are certainly necessary.

I want to briefly focus on the comment you made regarding local offices. All of us have heard stories of long lineups and the waiting in line. It's interesting to note the innovative approaches that some local offices took. I'm surprised that you were not able to find any evidence of a national directive from Passport Canada to local offices to give them some ideas about how they might mitigate the problem of the long wait lines.

You didn't find any evidence of that at all?

[Sheila Fraser]

No. As I mentioned, our audit was completed in August. We weren't auditing during the current peak.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

You found evidence of some of these local initiatives prior to the recent crunch.

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, we did: cases where they were trying to level out the demand. I think obviously they'll have to do more of that, because I would suspect that five years from now we'll be faced with a lot of renewals.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

You said there are some plans in the works to simplify the renewal process. Could you comment on that briefly?

[Sheila Fraser]

Sure, I'll ask Mr. Flageole to comment on it.

[Richard Flageole]

Madam Chair, we talk about it at paragraph 5.66. They're looking now at a process to simplify it. There's a whole bunch of options: there's the ten years in the States that's been discussed; whether, if you already have one, you can renew quicker—They're really looking at a number of options to be more efficient and trying to accelerate the process to renew the passports.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

That would deal with a person who presently has a passport and is simply renewing it. Did you look at all into the question of the length of time that passports are valid for? Some jurisdictions have ten years. Is there any comment from the auditing department on the wisdom of moving to a ten-year or possibly an eight-year period of time?

[Sheila Fraser]

That is a policy decision. We simply indicated that the department is looking at that and considering it as one of the options. For that, I believe, the law might even have to be changed, to allow it.