Human Resources Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I know you did a review of passports just recently. This is another piece of information many Canadians use as identity. You made some recommendations to that ministry, and they've seemingly acted fairly quickly on some of them. I know it's affected my ability as a member of Parliament in a rural and northern area to give service to my constituents, because now they have to show up in person at a passport office to get a passport urgently, if they make an application for a passport on an urgent basis. Members of Parliament used to be able to have the person come in, sit down with them, get their documentation, determine it was legit, send it off, and work with the department to have that done. We can no longer do that, and it sets up a two-tier system in the country. If you live in a bigger centre, you can just walk down and get a passport on a regular or an urgent basis. As a matter of fact, you can almost get it overnight if you're willing to pay enough. In my community, you have to drive eight hours to the nearest passport office, and that's often an overnight with tremendous expense.

Was that what you anticipated might happen? And how does that connect with social insurance numbers and how we make sure people have access, and we protect the integrity of that system, and yet make sure we're not discriminating against some folks?

[Sheila Fraser]

I think you've raised a very good point. In that passport audit, we raised a number of issues about the process, and especially over security concerns, as the passport office wasn't paying enough attention to security issues, given the events of the past few years. I recall that we raised a question about the process they had with members of Parliament, but we certainly never recommended they stop doing this.

Our major concern was with the way the passports were being sent. If I recall correctly, they would put them on buses and send them out. We asked, is this really the best way of delivering these documents; is there not a more secure way of doing it?

Now, if they've completely eliminated that, it was the passport office's decision; we never made a comment in that area. I agree with you that there's a balance that has to be made between the security of the process and the delivery of service to Canadians.

We are actually in the process now of doing a follow-up to that passport audit. The department did come forward with an elaborate, very good action plan to address the weaknesses we had identified, and the public accounts committee had asked us to go back and do a follow-up fairly quickly. So I believe that is under way, and we can certainly look at the issue of service and how to address that.

With the social insurance numbers, again the concern is with the documents used in issuing those numbers and with the integrity of the registry. We recommended that the federal government explore ways of collaborating with the provinces in the vital statistics records, so when someone died, for example, the federal government would be advised of that and the social insurance number could be cancelled, so there'd be better use of other information that's already available.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Martin.

The last questioner in this round is Mr. Lake, for five minutes, please.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's good to see you again, Ms. Fraser.

One of the things I want to start with here is something we've talked about in the public accounts committee a few times already. In different departments, it seems as if we have a real problem with information systems management. In a lot of things we deal with in the public accounts committee, that seems to be part of the problem.

Can you speak to how adequate the reliability and security of the systems, in this case, are?

[Sheila Fraser]

The major system here would be the registry per se. It is obviously a registry that has been built up over many years. During that process, the level of documentation and the rigour applied to the issuance of the social insurance number has changed dramatically over the last 30 or 40 years. So the point we were trying to make is that the integrity of that register has to be strengthened. There was a discrepancy between the numbers in the registry and the population. There can be very valid reasons for that, but the department should be able to explain what those are. The number did seem high at the time, at five million.

There were also issues with social insurance numbers that had been issued pre-1976, when there wasn't a lot of documentation required for their issuance. I remember, too, there was a question with the temporary social insurance number, because sometimes people could come in for temporary work permits and get temporary social insurance numbers—the 900-series—but there was no expiry date.

There was even a question with some numbers that, I think, they said were cancelled or were not to be used, but which could still be used in the system. The system hadn't deactivated them totally.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

So there are some system or hardware-type issues, as well as some—

[Sheila Fraser]

There were some issues there, and issues of ensuring that the numbers that were actually in there were valid and appropriate numbers.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

How important is the social insurance number in terms of the growing identity theft problem we have in this country?

[Sheila Fraser]

It's hard for me to give that kind of answer. The department may be able to respond to that better.

Certainly the social insurance number is used by a lot of different organizations, and not only the federal government. Obviously private industry will use it as an identifier for T4s, and all the rest of that, but it could be used as a basis for obtaining other cards and other information. So if you can appropriate a social insurance number, it can perhaps become easier to steal someone's identity.

So that was one of the concerns we were raising: has the number not become more than simply a file identifier? If so, then the procedures around the issuance of the number have to be strengthened accordingly. As we've mentioned before, in 2002 the government reaffirmed its policy that it was simply a file identifier.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Right. I think sometimes employers may give it a little bit more credibility than that.

There are 2.4 million more social insurance numbers than Canadians. I know they cleaned up the 2.6 million that were dormant, but do you have any idea on the progress towards fixing the former? Has that number come down since?

[Sheila Fraser]

We don't know, but I believe the department will be addressing that in their presentation.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Is there any reason for someone to have more than one social insurance number?

[Sheila Fraser]

I think when it first started off, quite frankly, I had colleagues in the office tell me about having a summer job and getting a social insurance number, and then the next year they'd get another one, and there wasn't a lot of control over that. So it is possible that people, in the initial stages, would have received more than one.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

They shouldn't have, though?

[Sheila Fraser]

They shouldn't.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

So there's no reason that someone should have more than one?

[Sheila Fraser]

Not to my knowledge, no.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Do you have any idea how many adults don't have one? You said there were 2.4 million more social insurance numbers than the population of adults 20 and over, but do you have any idea of how many adults don't have a social insurance number?

[Sheila Fraser]

I don't know. I would suspect the number would be fairly low, but I don't know. The department might be able to tell you that.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you very much, and hopefully we don't have to revisit this in the public accounts committee next year.

[Sheila Fraser]

Well, I would hope that our report, too, will show positive progress in addressing the issues raised previously.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I would like to thank the Auditor General and her team for coming in.

And to the Audit Board of Indonesia, and I wish you a good three days here.

For the committee's sake, I'm going to ask for a break of a couple of minutes as we change our witnesses. We'll get right back at this in a couple of minutes.

So thank you once again for being here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Just before we hear opening statements from our witnesses, Mr. Martin has asked that we take care of a little housekeeping. I apologize for this.

We've a press release that needs to be sent out, and we need approval for what we want to send out.

Let's deal with first things first. If you look at your package, right after the agenda you have the subject of consultations on employability in Canada. There shouldn't be too much discussion around this, as I know we've been talking about it. I'm just going to pose the question, and if we're all in favour we'll send out that release.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Chairman, since we received this when Ms. Fraser was here, could we have 30 seconds to read it?