Government Operations Committee on April 29th, 2008

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

If you had to send this $25 to the MP who provides this service, it would be even worse.

[Gérald Cossette]

In 2005, we opened a passport office in Pointe-Claire, in Quebec. That same year, we also opened two other offices in Toronto suburbs, namely, in Brampton and Whitby.

The first criterion we use to decide whether or not to open a passport office is the volume of applications. Since nearly 80% of Canadians submit their passport application in person, the model we use currently is based on traffic at the counter. Obviously, passport offices were opened in high-volume areas, namely in Montreal, Toronto, Halifax, in the provincial capitals. The model is changing and i will get back to this issue later on, if I'm asked about it.

The second criterion is profitability. We take a look at the number of applications processed there and how much it costs to run a passport office. The numbers tell us that, in order to be profitable, an average-sized passport office must process between 45,000 to 50,000 passports per year. Naturally there are front end and infrastructure costs, as well as operating costs, which include salaries and postage.

The Saguenay office is profitable partly because the applications received in Ottawa are forwarded there for processing. Small offices with flexible capacity receive applications from the central office for processing. This is how these offices become profitable over the long term.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

You may not have this information with you, but I would like to ask an official question and i would like to obtain this information, even if it means waiting until later on. In Estrie, how many applications are sent to Passport Canada, in total, including those that are forwarded by the MP, by the consignees and by Service Canada?

[Gérald Cossette]

We could provide you with these figures by checking the origin of the applications using the postal code.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Merci.

We're going to go to Mr. Kramp now.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Before I bring forward a couple of questions, let me honestly congratulate you for the Herculean effort that has gone in over this past while in response to the western hemisphere travel initiative.

Like most members of Parliament, we were under a pile of pressure back in our ridings because things were almost disastrous from the point of view of normality. From being around this place quite a bit of time now, I can say that change is a very difficult thing to bring about in a short period of time in the behemoth operation we have here. So for you to accomplish what you did in that short period of time to dramatically reduce those waiting lists, I want you to know that I'm appreciative and I know a number of my colleagues thank you for the efforts you have made.

While we give you a pat on the back that way, there's always the other side of the coin that we want more, we want better, and that's a public demand. But I do want it on the record that when we look at the waiting lists, we were at six, eight, or sometimes even ten weeks, and now it has been brought right back down to a normal rate. A lot of things had to go right; a lot of effort went in, and a lot of organization. So thank you to everybody involved, certainly on my behalf and on behalf of, I know, a number of members on all sides of the House.

I still have a number of concerns. What do you have as a rejection rate, when applications go in and they're turned back? Do you find a difference in rejection rates from various sources, or do you even track it?

The point I'm trying to get at here is that I have a number of people who will pick up an application, whether it's from Service Canada or the post office, and in it goes. A lot of times it's rejected for the simplest little thing, one of the reasons for adequate rejection, but it doesn't go through that trial and error or that little second guess.

When they come to our office, we do that little second check. I suppose maybe it isn't what's expected, but we do have a double-check system, and then we have a very minimal rejection rate.

Do you have any figures on rejection rates?

[Jody Thomas, Chief Operating Officer, Operations Bureau, Passport Canada]

The rejection rate for walk-in applications runs between 8% and 10%, generally, because of poor photos or lack of understanding of the documentation required. For mail-in applications, it runs between 20% and 24%, again primarily for photos and lack of documentation. It's much higher out of the United States.

We don't reject applications that have been submitted through MPs' offices. We hold those and contact the clients. But it still runs at about 8% to 10% in clients we have to contact again for more information.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

I'm surprised that it's that high from a member's office. The reason I say this is that I'm experiencing a tremendous rejection rate from the public, and of course—the old story—it's much easier and more cost-effective to do it right the first time than to go ahead and send things back and forth and get into this, “You need this done and that done.” I really think there has to be much stronger emphasis on doing it right the first time, whether it's a simplification of the form process, better instructions on how to complete the form, or criteria that has to be met explicitly.

What is a good photo? I'm a member of Parliament and I couldn't tell you what a good photo is. They come into our office and it looks good to me, but then it's rejected. Then they'll come in with another photo and I'll say, “Well, I don't know,” but it's accepted. If we don't know, how does the public know? Where is the standard of acceptability so that we can eliminate a lot of these rejections?

I really think some of our major expenses and cost in this have to do with the rejection rate. Quite frankly, once we're hitting over 1%, 2%, 3%, or 4%, I find it totally unacceptable. I think that should be a major effort on behalf of Passport Canada, to give us some direction and give the Canadian population better direction so we can make improvements in that area.

[Jody Thomas]

We agree with you 100%. We're doing a significant number of activities to address the rejection rate.

We have focus groups going on in various regions of the country right now about the usability and the understandability of our forms, and we're going through a complete form redesign.

We have the renewals program. The renewal form is much simpler, fewer questions to answer, and there's about a 2% rejection rate of the renewal applications.

With regard to the photos, we've just done an extensive review of our photo standards and we're starting to publish the new standards now. We've looked at what we had done. Some of the change in technology allows us to be slightly less stringent so we will be able to accept more photos without affecting security, and that should see a reduction in the number of photo rejects. We'll have material available shortly that will explain the photo standards and what's a good photo and what's not a good photo.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Okay, thank you. I'm glad you're making serious progress and I thank you for that information.

One bit of difficulty we all face here.... And here's where I'm thankful for the new office located up in Mr. Holland's riding, as I'm only a couple of hours away. Mr. Angus of course has a whole different situation with problems with regard to this. The difficulty we all face is of course the location of an urgent service or service that has a high demand.

We all have circumstances and situations where people unexpectedly need passports. That's where sometimes 15, 20, 30 days, or whatever is not acceptable for a variety of real problems and circumstances. In this particular case, the people come to us and we just send them in directly--it's only a couple of hours away--and they get the excellent service they need. They have their passport in a very few days, which is tremendous. But there are many members and many areas across this country where that is geographically impossible without an unbelievable cost.

How do you see us trying to find some way to alleviate these urgent situations? Do you have a potential fallback mechanism so a lot of remote and rural areas can deal with these urgent problems?

[Jody Thomas]

We use a number of methodologies to help in remote areas when there is an urgent situation. MPs assist greatly. They contact us on behalf of the constituent, and we expedite the process. We use the receiving agents. They contact us, and once we receive the application we expedite it or we send the file itself to one of our local offices. If you're in northern Ontario or northern Manitoba, we would send it to the Winnipeg office and they would issue the passport on an urgent basis there.

We are looking into the new process with the receiving agents whereby they validate your document, so once it's in our system it should take us less than 24 hours to turn that file around. We're trying to change our process so it's more online, and we receive the application and the information instantaneously. For example, by increasing the number of online applications for a renewal application, the time taken to process the application is reduced significantly and we should be able to turn it around again from a local office within 24 hours, so you're not mailing from Ontario to western Canada, as an example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you. We'll get back to you again.

I just wanted to add, we MPs in northern Ontario are not allowed to take emergency applications. We have to send them to Ottawa or Toronto. They will not allow us to facilitate and receive passports that have to be treated on an urgent basis. That's been the case since 2006, I think February or March 2006. It's become a real challenge when you can't facilitate those urgent passports.

Okay, I'm going to go to Mr. Angus. I won't let you answer because I just wanted to set this straight. We do have to send them down, no matter what happens.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for coming today. This is certainly an issue of great interest to all of us, because we, as well as you, are in many ways on the front line of passports. Sometimes we have very good experiences and sometimes less impressive experiences.

You talked about the need to “bridge the gap between urban and regional standards”. Mr. Kramp was giving me the perfect set-up, as I represent the region of Timmins. We're 1,000 kilometres from one walk-in passport service on one side and 800 kilometres on the other. Our region, and Madame Marleau's is the same, is heavily dependent on mining, which is international. International contractors are going in and out of the airports all the time. We always have situations where we need to get a passport turned around, and the only thing we can tell them is to take the 12-hour bus ride to Toronto to get their passport.

I don't think that's an acceptable standard. Are there any plans to be able to alleviate this? This vast area of the country has no walk-in service.

[Gérald Cossette]

Bridging the gap between service standards for walk-in offices and mail-in applications is being reduced in the sense that passports are being processed within ten days if you go to a walk-in office and passports are being processed within twenty days if you apply by mail. Right now, the service standard for both walk-in and mail-in is exactly the same because we have beefed up our capacity to respond to mail-in applications.

When it comes to urgent service in the regions, we are in the process, as Ms. Thomas was saying, of working with Service Canada on the expansion of services that Service Canada would provide. The challenge we face with urgent passport applications is that our policy requires people to apply in person. It would be too easy for someone to walk into an office and say “I need a passport urgently, so waive all the security checks and get me my passport because I have to move forward”. Hence the requirement for people to appear in person, and also, hence the reason why MPs, not being part of the federal public service, do not have the authority basically to authenticate a person. If they did, what would happen if there was a mistake? There would be an issue of accountability between your office and our office and so forth.

What we would like to do with Service Canada, and we're in the process of working on it with them, is to allow them basically to authenticate the documents. First of all, if they were to authenticate a document and ship an application to us quickly, either by fax or e-mail, we would be in a position to process much more quickly. We also have an arrangement with CBSA through which people can go to an airport as they fly out, get their passport at the airport, have the CBSA officer confirm the identity and then have people move on.

It's not the perfect fit, and we're aware of that, but we hope that as we develop a closer partnership with Service Canada we'll be in a position to use their services more extensively.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Well, we certainly have recommended building a partnership with Service Canada, because they are front-line providers. They are federal civil servants.

I can't speak for my colleagues, but I'm not really interested in having to assume the role in an emergency situation, because I also need these people to vote for me. If I start to give them a hard time about their identity.... That's not something I want to be dealing with. I'd rather they go to Service Canada, but they can't do that right now.

In terms of Service Canada and where we stand in northern Ontario, you're speaking about unprecedented access to passport service. That was the quote. And we've heard about the chips and the facial recognition and everything else. Yet again, what we're dealing with in northern Ontario is the fact that as of March 31 we have no more passport service in Iroquois Falls, Cochrane, Kirkland Lake, New Liskeard, northwestern Ontario, Rainy River, Red Lake, Sioux Lookout, and Wawa, because you cancelled the service that was being delivered through Service Ontario. People simply have no place to get their passports.

How can you come here and tell us that people are getting unprecedented access to passport service when people in my riding and all across northern Ontario are now finding they have no access to passport service because you cancelled the service that Service Ontario was providing?

[Gérald Cossette]

With all due respect, we did not cancel the service. We were basically moving Service Ontario out of the business and slowly moving Service Canada into the business of providing the same services. That's the first thing.

The second thing is that Service Canada does not issue passports. Passport Canada issues passports. So all the partners we have will always remain receiving agents. We are working with them at having the receiving agent perform more functions on our behalf, so that when we get the application the process is quicker for us and the rejection rate is lower. But at the end of the day, Passport Canada will always be the one--

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I understand that, but with all due respect, you've cancelled the process that was in place for Service Ontario and you say you're slowly replacing it with Service Canada. Well, these communities are not getting passport service now. It has been cancelled. Period.

That was the decision by Passport Canada. You have not put in place Service Canada to pick up the slack. The distance between North Bay and Timmins is over 400 kilometres. There is no passport service at all in any of those communities at this point.

Why did you cancel the service if you weren't ready to move in with Service Canada to pick up the slack?

[Gérald Cossette]

Madam Chair, the service we had with Service Ontario was a pilot that was implemented and launched a couple of years ago. We reviewed that program for security reasons and for efficiency reasons. The mail is always an available option, and, as I said, the processing time for mailing applications as we speak is the same as it is for walk-in offices.

We understand that in the past, people found it difficult to wait for extensive periods of time before receiving a passport; we acknowledged the problem we had and we tried to fix it by increasing our capacity. That is always an option open to Canadians. But as I said, the next phase of our strategy is to have more Service Canada offices providing the passport services, including expanded services, and we're hoping to have this as quickly as possible.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

My constituents were told that the services were being shut down in Iroquois Falls and Kirkland Lake. Kirkland Lake has 15,000 people and no passport service. New Liskeard area has 15,000 people and no passport service. They were being told to go to their member of Parliament. My office runs clinics, with one person going in to cover every possible federal service.

I don't really think it's our responsibility to pick up the slack for a decision your department made to cut off passport service to people in northern Ontario. If you're going to cut off a Service Ontario pilot project, which was a very good project that serviced under-serviced communities that are much farther than 60 kilometres away from any walk-in office, why have you not put the resources in place to ensure that Service Canada will pick up the slack? I don't think telling them to go to the pony express is a reasonable alternative.

[Gérald Cossette]

Do you want to answer?

[Jody Thomas]

First, we're not saying that it is when you're 60 kilometres away from a passport office; it's from a point of service, including Service Canada. The reality of that pilot was that it wasn't really meeting our needs in that those files were going to Thunder Bay and they were overwhelmed. They weren't equipped to do it. They weren't coming into our central processing centre. By shifting resources around we've been able to reduce the mail-in service nationally to 20 days. So it's the same as a walk-in, which we think is a better service than what people were getting previously. Thunder Bay couldn't turn the files around in time any longer. We couldn't expand that office. It can't sustain a larger office. So this was, long term, the best thing to do.

Over the course of the summer and fall we have a plan with Service Canada to roll out new agents and new points of service. We just have to get them trained. The training for ServiceOntario wasn't to the standard we wanted. There was a whole, significant group of problems with that service. But before we shut it down, we ensured that the mail-in service was at ten days so that you were getting the same turnaround time as if you had walked into a Passport Canada office. We thought that was a good compromise.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

We'll get back to you, Mr. Angus.

I just wanted to add something. You talk about Service Canada, and that's wonderful. But if Service Canada doesn't get permission to hire the staff to deal with the number of applications, you don't have a point of service there. I know that Service Canada in my area said that they had to hire a bunch of staff to deal with the applications we get. So I'm not sure that shifting your costs onto Service Canada is always necessarily the best way to go. I'm just adding that because I've been told that it is the reason there is no point of service at Service Canada in Sudbury. It is because of the volume you get there.

I know that Canada Post is the receiving agent in my area, as is my office. We're not called that, but we do them, as does Mr. Bonin's office, and I know that the volume is extremely high. I just wanted to make sure. I guess it helps you if Service Canada has to hire seven, eight, or nine more people, but it's still not the service some people need.

I'm going to go now to Mr. Silva.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

I realize that while it's a very large country, and of course there are different issues throughout the country, certainly in my riding passports are just not an issue. I think we get maybe ten calls a year on this issue. Passport processing is not a big issue. So there are different realities in different parts of the country.

I wanted to take up the question my previous colleague talked about, which is the issue of security and the security chips and whether the information has been embedded and whether, in fact, the chips will be of any use ten years from now. Also, in relation to security, does the fact that there is high turnover present security challenges, as well? Because you are training people in security information. If they're going somewhere else, does that present security risks for the passports we've put in place?

[Gérald Cossette]

Thank you.

With regard to the ten-year passport, before we implement or roll it out nationally in 2011, a certain number of things will happen.

The first thing is that we will implement official recognition software, which will make it extremely difficult for people to apply under two names, for instance. That's the first check that will be done. As people apply and as their request comes in, the software will allow us to basically compare an incoming photograph with the 16 million photographs we have in our system as we speak. That's the first security feature that will be implemented.

Second, we are also implementing within the next 12 months an electronic system that will allow us to do all the alerts. Most of the security checks we're doing right now will be done electronically. Right now lots of the security checks are conducted manually, hence the problem of security when our turnover is very high and we need to retrain people, for instance. We will have a system that will allow us to do that electronically as we go. So, on an ongoing basis, the computer will check for variation patterns and so on, which again will reinforce our security apparatus.

Third, we will change the booklet itself. The passport booklet will be modified and modernized.

The fourth element of the security strategy is the chip itself. The chip will basically contain exactly the same information you have on page 2 of your passport: photograph, names, date of birth, and so on. The chip will be a replica of what you have on page 2 of your passport. If someone wants to tamper with the booklet, they will also have to tamper with the chip. That will make the book more secure.

Our recommendation has always been that new security features have to be implemented before the validity of the passport can be extended.

I hope I have provided you with some answers to the first question.

With regard to security, yes, in fact turnover may be a problem if it is fairly high. One of the sectors right now where we are stable and beefing up is the security side of Passport Canada. Two years ago a DG position for security was created, to build a bureau that is in a much better position to respond to new security requirements.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Passport Canada was recently criticized by the House of Commons public accounts committee, and I want to know what measures you've put into place since it made several recommendations and criticisms as well. Have there been substantial changes since then that you want to share with this committee?