Evidence of meeting #38 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 passport.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Great, but if that's what they're doing, it will certainly tell you—
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Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
—how to construct your website better in the future, if you could tell why 31 million people are going there now. I recognize that may be multiple times for the same person, but it's just an incredible number of Canadians, when you figure out how many there are going to it.
Other countries are obviously having to deal also with the United States and their passport requirements. Mr. Bevington talked about people from England being able to get their passports maybe even at a quicker pace than we can, but how are other countries that have a lot of travel to the United States dealing with this issue, and what has it done to them?
I recognize we're the big neighbour and we're right next door, but let's take Mexico as an example. What has Mexico done?
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Chief Executive Officer, Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs
I do not know.
4:30 p.m.
Director General for Policy and Planning, Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs
I'm sorry, I really have very little information about Mexico.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Apparently they're not travelling to the United States with passports.
4:30 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
4:30 p.m.
Director General for Policy and Planning, Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs
I'll avoid commenting on that, but citizens of Mexico need a visa to go to the United States as well. Unlike the visa-free travel that Canadians enjoy—passport-free travel, apart from air—it's a considerably different situation with Mexico.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
Madame Chair, I may be sharing my time with my colleague here.
I think my colleague covered what's going on in other countries.
One of my constituents called me this week and asked me why we don't issue them for ten years as opposed to five years. I told him I thought it's probably for security reasons, and maybe because security improves over a period of time and you wouldn't want to issue them for too long, but I told her I would check with you to see whether that's the reason, or whether it's just for us to make more money.
4:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs
No, it is.
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Chief Executive Officer, Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs
Yes. In fact lots of countries that are now issuing electronic passports are going back to five years.
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Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
Are they going back to five years because the security improves over a period of time?
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Chief Executive Officer, Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs
The thing is that if your passport lasts longer and it is being counterfeited, you have an issue. There's also the issue of facial recognition. As we move towards new technology—
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Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
And your age as well, sure. I had a lot more hair ten years ago. Say no more.
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Chief Executive Officer, Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs
From our standpoint, the five years is directly related to security.
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Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
I saw a show—perhaps it was W-FIVE—saying that the Canadian passport seems to be one of the most popular out there for terrorists and for people forging them. Obviously it's because Canadian citizens get through almost anywhere without a lot of resistance, but is it also because they're easy to forge, or not at all?
4:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs
No, it's really because—you're absolutely right—Canadians have easy access worldwide. Canada's a multicultural society, so it's normal to travel with a Canadian passport, regardless of your ethnic background and so on. It's for that reason and that reason only.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
I'll just follow up on that and some of my previous questioning. In fact, then, with Canadian passports some of our greatest security concerns should be potentially with other governments. Has there been any thought of informing Canadians when they travel abroad that, should their passports be taken from their physical possession for greater than, let's say, a 24- or 48-hour period, this needs to be reported back?
For instance, in countries such as Sudan and Syria, some of the countries I've traveled to, unfortunately you're put in a situation such that you have to hand over your passport, and it's not returned, sometimes, for several days. That has made me somewhat nervous.
Most recently I spoke with an individual, one of the Canadians working in Libya in their oil fields, and it's a regular occurrence there that in the hotels Canadians stay in, their passports disappear, only to reappear 24 or 48 hours before they're about to leave. Especially when there are patterns to these occurrences, that raises great concerns about whether or not there's another Borys Wrzesnewskyj with very different facial features out there travelling.
If there is no regime in place—and I'm not aware of one, or otherwise I would have had to report it—when do we expect we'd take that sort of security concern into account?
