Government Operations Committee on April 26th, 2022

[Annie Boudreau]

As an example, we'll look at the real estate. We will look at the footprint. Obviously what we have seen since COVID-19 is, as you said, hybrid, or people working from home. It's time to look at the real estate we lease and the real estate we own, and to look at what is the best that we need in order to capture the new world that we are in. That will be part of the review that we are undertaking.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

[Technical difficulty—Editor] considering we're coming out of a pandemic, where a lot of trends that we maybe saw emerging were accelerated and accentuated during the COVID pandemic, I think the timing of this strategic policy review is excellent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

Now we will go to our fourth round, and we'll start with Mr. Lobb for five minutes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thanks again, Mr. Chair. Again, I appreciate everybody being here.

I'd like to go back to Mr. Wagner again for his input on digital ID. I'm pretty sure the Province of Ontario is spending $20 billion on digital ID. I look at some of the stuff.... I'm not going to be critical of them, either, but to read some of the stuff...there's a check mark, so that when you go to a liquor store you just show a check mark. I know that I'm simplifying that quite a bit. I know we're not spending $20 billion for a check mark.

How do you see the federal government working with the provinces and territories on digital ID? Is this something you envision? Is your passport linked to your driver's licence and this kind of thing? Give us the 101 here on what you see.

[Paul Wagner]

There are a couple of different examples.

One is around a digital ID for government services. If you think about having a digital ID—and we'll talk about what that looks like from a citizen's perspective—the citizen owns that digital ID. They own that code. There's no master database where all the digital IDs are stored and it becomes a target.

What happens when you use your digital ID is that you actually validate that the ID you have is in fact you. There's another layer of protection in there called “multifactor authentication”. It basically is another factor to ensure that if I just pick up somebody's cellphone or I get access to somebody's digital ID, I also need to have another factor to ensure that assurance.

I want to go back a bit on that first question you had around that idea of “are we are exchanging lots of information among the provinces?” The goal is to actually have a very minimalistic approach in terms of how that works. From a citizen's perspective, one thing we're going to be doing is a consultation with Canadian citizens around how a pan-Canadian infrastructure could work and how digital ID is seen as being beneficial to citizens and to businesses.

As individual provinces start to build out their digital ID infrastructure, like you said, you can envisage a world where a citizen has a digital ID. They go in to get a licence for their car: “Can you show me your driver's licence?” Well, that can be pulled up in a digital wallet. You could have a credential that's your driver's licence. You could also have a credential that's your proof of vaccination. That would be attached to your digital ID.

If you think of one of the gaps today in a lot of provinces, you showed your vaccine credentials, probably on your phone, and then you had to produce a physical piece of identification to confirm that you were in fact Paul Wagner. Digital ID actually brings those two things together, binds them and creates that seamless transaction.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Right, but it's got to be a little more than that. That seems pretty analog to me that we're just linking your licence to your vaccine passport. I know that you're just giving me a 101 there, but if you log in to check your tax status or you file your HST, I don't see any glaring problem with that right now such that we would need another factor of authentication or identification.

If you log in through your bank card for your banking, that sign-in seems fairly safe and fairly secure. Are we scrapping that and building on something else? I'm just trying to get it so that I can explain back to my constituents what this actually is. I'm still not getting it, I guess.

[Paul Wagner]

We're planning a technical briefing, and will be happy to go into a little more detail where we can show this more effectively.

The short of it is, we're not displacing the other forms of identification that are out there. The examples you gave where you're logging into individual systems...If you think about the ability to have a digital ID, though...I'll go back to the Government of Canada. If you have a service platform where you log in as Ben Lobb, and you're able to then access a multitude of government services having been identified, those are the kinds of benefits we can see downstream.

We're not architected for that now, but it does allow for that.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I can already do that.

Are you proposing that my passport would be a digital ID, as well? Will I have a digital passport in this plan?

[Paul Wagner]

There will always be physical opportunities for this. There's no Canadian left behind.

I won't say digital passports are part of the initial plan. We need to get the infrastructure in place to start to use that. I wouldn't say digital passports would be the first place we would start that.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

It would seem reasonable that this would be something that you're proposing. I'm glad to hear nobody will be left behind, because many of us represent seniors, Amish and Mennonites, so okay, we'll see. To be determined; to be continued.

[Paul Wagner]

Happy to continue the conversation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

We'll now go to Mr. Housefather, for five minutes.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you again to all the officials for being here today.

I'm going to go back to Mr. Wagner for one second on the digital ID project. Could you tell me how many different accounts the Government of Canada manages today?

[Paul Wagner]

We have 33 departments and 270 different services. I don't have the exact number of accounts.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Would it be in the couple of hundreds? More than 200?

[Paul Wagner]

In terms of accounts?

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Yes, in terms of accounts.

[Paul Wagner]

There are 270 different services you can log in electronically.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

So, at least 270?

[Paul Wagner]

Correct.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

How could we do better in terms of managing that?

[Paul Wagner]

You're dealing in terms of a log-in. Back to Mr. Lobb's question, if you think of a digital ID as being a bit of a cornerstone for service delivery, right now we have a situation where you have to log in to Parks Canada to get your campsite, and then you have to log in to ESDC on a separate platform to apply for CPP.

If you leverage digital ID, and have the ability to actually identify individuals, get them into a platform where you can start to then present a multitude of government services, that's where you want to go from a digital government perspective. We're all doing it in our daily lives on other platforms, but it does begin with that verified identity, so that we know the individual we're dealing with at the other end of the device.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

It highly simplifies the process for those of us who are technologically literate, but as I guess Mr. Lobb said, it doesn't resolve the problem for those who don't have access to technology, or those who don't know how to use it at all. The end result is that is what it would be. It would be making life a lot easier for those of us who are technologically adept.

[Paul Wagner]

That's absolutely one path. The other path would be...As we start to look at service modernization, thinking about how we actually can align services to deliver in a digital world, that will also yield gains in terms of an analog world as we start to morph services together.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you.

I want to go back to the real property question, because I know homework was given, Mr. Chair, for somebody to respond in writing to various questions. I'd like to give her the opportunity to respond now, quickly and orally, so she doesn't have to spend hours writing out the answer.