Human Resources Committee on June 15th, 2006

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

Thus the steps to work at the other end, with the code you're talking about.

[Charles Nixon]

Yes.

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

So you're taking away the credibility of that number, in a sense--the overused credibility.

[Charles Nixon]

That's right. Exactly. It is not an identity card.

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

I have a question to do with training. I notice on page 2 of the brief the committee received, the Auditor General talks about the fact that there's still no formal training for social insurance number investigators. What are you doing to address that?

[Charles Nixon]

She's out of date, and that's fair enough because she hasn't come looking. But we went through a whole set of training some years ago to bring up the calibre of people at the front end who take social insurance numbers. We have just instituted a whole new system of much more rigorous training for all of our front-line staff--all 1,500 of them--where they take a week's worth of training and they're actually certified at the end of it. They must pass a very high bar in order to continue to do that work, or they're reassigned to other work.

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

When the Auditor General uses the word “investigators” here, is she talking about a different role from the front-line staff? She's talking about people who are actually looking into fraud, right?

[Charles Nixon]

Yes.

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

And she says there's no formal training program even for them.

[Charles Nixon]

That's not true. There is formal training for investigators.

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

So, it's just the way this is.... And there was back then, too?

[Charles Nixon]

Yes. Let's just say everything gets better with time. We need to keep up with the development of the games that are played out there and make sure our staff are fully apprised of the approaches to fraud that people might take, be wary of and awake to them, so that they can help investigate and prevent fraud in the future.

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

I have one last question.

One of the things that have been a common theme in our public accounts meeting--and you probably heard me say this to the Auditor General--is that the information system, the technology the departments are using, seems to be out of date or not up to where it should be in terms of standards. Your systems throughout the registry have obviously been around for a while. What upgrades have been done recently in the system to make sure it's capable of doing what it needs to do?

[Hy Braiter]

Well, the first thing we did, of course, was clean up the data. We've linked with the provinces, as you've heard, and we're getting death information and historical information. For example, from Ontario we got at least five years' worth of historical data.

As we make agreements with each province, we're going to go back and match computer-wise to the database to flag any deaths we didn't know about. We've gone through the system and matched it against all other systems that use the SIN number. If we see that there's been no activity in five years, for example, if there's been no tax deduced, no premiums of any kind paid, no benefits claimed by that person, if that person just hasn't shown up in five years on any of these valid usages, we mark the SIN as dormant. Should that person ever show up for benefits, he or she would be called in and interrogated to make sure they proved their identity.

We're linking with Citizenship, as you've heard, to make sure our files are clean. We're matching the information on birthdays and so on from CRA files, so as you file your income tax we'll see if it's compatible with our registry.

We have brought the incidence down from five million to 700,000.

We've just hired an independent firm to go through and look at the quality of the data again and set standards of quality for different kinds of errors. Some errors are more important than others. Some errors are identity issues. Other errors may be a flip of the birth date--day, month, year; month, day, year.

As you've heard, up until 1976 you didn't have to prove anything to get a social insurance number. That's the history of it. It was just an account number. Decisions were taken back then--and the decisions are still valid--not to call these people in, not to bother these more senior people to start proving their identity all over again. But we look at it when they come to apply for benefits. We validate them again when they come for CPP; we still ask for documentation.

So we've cleaned up that methodology.

The really important thing we've done is implement a brand new state-of-the-art system that allows people to get a SIN number in 15 minutes. It puts them in front of an individual who's well trained on identity and documents. We link our files with all the provincial files so that when a person comes in with a birth certificate from Ontario, we not only know that this is how it should look--we put it under the scope of special equipment to make sure it's a valid document--but we also link in technologically with the province to see if it actually matches what the province has for this individual. And should it not match, we don't just say, you can't get a SIN; we go back to the province and we start an investigation. So we're helping the province to clean up as well.

I think we're pretty good. Our agents at the front desks in all our offices will have online access to that central index file to double check. When you're in front of us, they can double check the information you may have given us 30, 40, or 50 years ago to see if it all still matches the documents you're showing us.

So we're working on it, and it's really coming along. We hope the Auditor General will validate that.

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

As I said at the beginning, I want to thank you, and it does sound like you're making some progress.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Do you have one final comment, Mr. Nixon?

[Charles Nixon]

I just want to add on to the end of your question. In addition to the state-of-the-art new system that we're implementing this year, we continue to undertake threat assessments of our systems to make sure they are robust from outside interference. It is extremely important to us, given the information that we protect on behalf of Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

I'd like to take this time to thank Mr. Nixon and his team for coming in to talk to us today and to hear the update. I'm sure we'll all be watching this next year when the Auditor General comes back to let us know about the progress.

Thank you once again for taking time out of your schedules to come and meet with us today.

Before we close, I want to say that before we met with the witnesses Mr. Martin had talked about passing the travel itinerary. I do want some clarification. Perhaps you would like to have a look at the dates in terms of where we're at, just before we close.

You have the dates in front of you. Perhaps you would like to turn to the page on the following cities and times.

As you can appreciate, we're in Ottawa from September 18 to October 6, when we return, so that doesn't take a whole lot to understand. We're going to be having the meetings in Ottawa.

In terms of eastern Canada, I have talked to our whip's office. He is obviously working with the opposition whips. He has no issue with our travelling on the 9th to the 12th, which is not a break week. I believe it's the week before the break week. There's not an issue there as long as agreements can reached with the opposition whips. There would probably be six of us--I would think three from the government, three from the opposition--as we move out to talk to people, as long as there's an agreement that this is not an issue, for travel. The 9th to the 12th is not an issue with our whip's office at this point in time.

I understand there may be some concerns with the break week of November 13 to 15. If it is the will of the committee, once again we will need to go back and talk to our respective whips' offices if we were to travel on a non-break week. Certainly, people are busy enough as it is on their own break weeks. Maybe we should be looking at trying to put that back to a time when it would be acceptable to all parties in terms of the ability to travel out west.

I throw that to the will of the committee in terms of where we're at.

Mr. Brown.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

From my perspective, we get inundated with meeting requests and event requests when we're here. We depend on the break week as an opportunity to attend those events and those meetings. I think it would inhibit our role as MPs if we weren't able to utilize that time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'm seeing by the nodding of heads that we have a consensus there in terms of travel. I guess the thought process is that we probably need to go back to our respective whips. As long as there's a pairing in place there shouldn't be an issue as far as that goes. We will look to move forward on the 9th to the 12th. I would suggest we can perhaps talk to Karen to make sure that's not an issue.

Of course, the 27th in Montreal was a proposed date. That is a Friday. Do we have some concerns with that? Do we want to look at a different date? Obviously there are no votes on Fridays. Is that too busy in terms of people trying to get home for the weekend? October 27 was the proposed date that we would be heading to Montreal. It's very easy, of course, from Montreal to get back to all airports in Ottawa, Toronto, or wherever. If that's not an issue, then we'll leave that.

What we need to discuss or be prepared to come and discuss on Tuesday would be the western swing.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Try to get it out of the break week.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

We'll work with the clerk's office as well as talk to the respective whips and maybe have some suggestions when we come back here on Tuesday. Okay?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

With that, we'll adjourn the meeting.