Let me give you a very relevant example. We're rolling out dental care under newer but relatively traditional methods. We had an IVR system and now we have a web form. In all, that's going relatively smoothly and it's about as simple as we can make it, given the technology that we currently have.
I asked the Canadian digital service to mock up what this would look like with a digital credentials system. Of course, there was $25.1 million in budget 2024 for a single sign-on.
If you go through the current system, you really are reintroducing yourself to the Government of Canada all over again. What's your name, your address, your birthday, your spousal situation, etc.? A digital credential would actually allow you to sign in and then it would show all the information that the government currently has. It would ask if we had your permission to share that information with health, in this case, in order to be able to fill out the application. You'd only have to answer the additional questions.
That takes an eight-minute process with lots of room for errors and disruptions to something that could take 30 seconds. Then you actually would get your benefits card immediately.
You could imagine, in the future, actually filling it out on your phone in the dental office and going straight in and getting your teeth fixed.