Evidence of meeting #67 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sin.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
My last question is a very short one. Has the department considered or looked into the use of smart cards as a way of replacing the existing SIN cards?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Integrity Services Branch, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
I'll ask my colleagues from Treasury Board Secretariat to help me out on this answer, but as you know, the SIN is not a piece of identification in that sense, so it need not have biometrics or any other special measure on it.
Deputy Chief Information Officer, Treasury Board Secretariat
I don't think I really have too much to add to that. The use of smart cards, where they would be used, and whether that would add anything to the integrity of individual programs are things that individual programs across the federal government are looking at. I think my colleagues from the department have sort of identified their approach for addressing program integrity issues and the integrity of the social insurance register.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you, Mr. Chong.
We're now going to move to our last round. We have Mr. Merasty for five minutes, please.
Liberal
Gary Merasty Liberal Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I have a couple of quick, to the point questions. Is there any certain segment of the population that is underrepresented in the uptake or applications of SINs in the country--new Canadians or people in remote locations or aboriginal people in particular--and if there is, why is that?
I know you referenced some foundation documents, and coincidentally I had a question. This is a status Indian card, and I don't know if they're accepted or not. I was asked that question by an applicant. Getting photo ID in some of our remote communities, even for voting purposes, is next to impossible when they're isolated.
Have any of those barriers been identified, and have any efforts been made to overcome them somehow?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Integrity Services Branch, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
We, too, worry that they are underrepresented. The SIN is a vital document. I wouldn't say that it is as a piece of identification, but it is, as we all know, difficult to function in Canadian society if you don't have one. So we do worry that there are segments of the population that we're not reaching, and you've identified two of them, including people living in remote communities. Service Canada is undertaking to reach them either through the web or through our community visits, because you may know that we take ourselves on the road; we don't just stay in our Service Canada offices in the major cities.
We're also looking at SINs at landings to get at the new immigrant population--it's not implemented yet, but we're working on it--so that when someone arrives in Canada, they arrive with a SIN that's tied to the immigration process, and their identity is validated through the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, to get at a potentially underrepresented part of the population who may arrive here and who we then have trouble reaching. There may be language difficulties, although we're looking at multilingual services, so we're working on it. We're trying to identify these segments and do what we can to reach them, and that's consistent with the Service Canada vision.
Liberal
Gary Merasty Liberal Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK
This question may be for the Auditor General as well. I don't know if this has ever been looked at or examined. Do you actually know if there are underrepresented populations? I know you just gave an answer, but do we actually know if there's underrepresentation in any particular segment?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That is not an issue that we looked at in this audit, and I don't know if the department would have that information or not. I'm sorry.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Integrity Services Branch, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
I think for us, because we are contemplating the SIN at landing service in major airports, we're concerned enough that there is an underrepresented group in the population, and we want to make sure they have a social insurance number as soon as they arrive in Canada. Without having specific data on how long people may have been here without one and the problems they may encounter in getting one once they're here, we just think it would be a far better service to provide it to them as part of the package of things they receive, a bundle of services, if you like, that they receive before they even arrive in Canada, from us and other departments.
Liberal
Assistant Deputy Minister, Integrity Services Branch, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
I'll ask my colleague to respond.
Director General, Identity Management Services, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
Your question was whether we take the status Indian card?
Director General, Identity Management Services, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
Yes, we do. If you're a registered Indian and you want to have the status indicated on your SIN record, you'd have to submit something called a Certificate of Indian Status to us. So, yes, that is quite possible. We annotate your records accordingly.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you, Mr. Merasty.
I will now move to Mr. Lake.
You have five minutes, sir.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I see that this meeting is televised today. I'm sure it's going to be a sure ratings winner for CPAC.
My first question is in regard to the SIR. I'm just curious, what information is in the SIR? Obviously a person's name and address are, but what other information is in this registry?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Integrity Services Branch, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
It would be all the information collected during the SIN application process, so it's the information provided by the applicant to us.
Onno, you may be more familiar with the actual fields, beyond the obvious ones.
Director General, Identity Management Services, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
There are somewhere in the neighbourhood of about 30 fields, but the key fields have to do with the name of the individual, their birth date, their place of birth, and their nationality. I think those are the key fields.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
It has place of birth. So the address isn't a field?
Director General, Identity Management Services, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
Their address is not an element within the social insurance register per se. It is something that is collected by individual programs. When you apply for a program like employment insurance, then the address would come into play.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Right.
In terms of the updating of information, I guess you could hypothetically have two Bob Smiths born in Toronto on the same day, or whatever the case is. There's no other unique identifier. Is there a system for...?
I'm thinking about the provinces. This is the largest unique identifier system or database in the country. Are there similar systems? What would be the next biggest system that you could use to compare information with your system to find out whether there are inconsistencies in the data?
Director General, Identity Management Services, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
We have a very active program with the Canada Revenue Agency. In that program, we cross-check our respective data. CRA takes our data and uses the social insurance number in the tax process, and we take the information with respect to employment and other factors and we use it to check the social insurance number.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
I was thinking about the privacy laws, and I just had a question on.... Is there a possibility that certain privacy laws might actually work counter to the overall privacy interests of Canadians in this case? By way of an example, I'm thinking about whether or not there may be walls set up between government departments and things like that in order to protect privacy. It may be possible that sometimes those walls would block information that might point to social insurance number abuse, in a sense, if organizations were able to share that information.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Integrity Services Branch, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
Mr. Chair, clearly we operate within the framework of laws passed by Parliament and take them as a given. There are strict controls over the sharing of information, and privacy is one of the paramount concerns. The challenge for us as public servants is to try to achieve program integrity and service goals at the same time that we respect the privacy of Canadians. For us, it's a question of figuring out the right way of doing that without necessarily breaking down the walls between the programs.
We need a different frame, so to speak, for how we approach services to Canadians. We achieve integrity goals, save money for taxpayers, provide services Canadians need, and respect privacy all at the same time. It's not easy, but that's what we have to do.