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.