Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 19th, 2012

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

In terms of the cost, I'd ask for your guesstimate. What should the cost be of being able to get a fingerprint and a live picture, if the government wanted to be able to charge for that?

[Robert Bell]

That's such a good question, and I wish I had a direct answer. Can I come back to you?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

By all means.

I think it's important to recognize that the changes the government is making are going to have an impact in two ways on an individual's ability to acquire one of these temporary visas: one is that there is a potential cost that has not been debated; and the other is that there's going to have to be that physical presence.

I wanted to get that on the record, because that is something that has not been talked about to date.

[IIan Arnon]

Could I add something to that?

Of course if you're going to capture fingerprint or iris, you have to go physically to the office of enrolment or the consulate, etc. But there is an option to submit electronically, if you're just going to capture face. With today's electronic cameras there are ways of automatically verifying that the image meets a certain quality standard to make it usable for facial recognition.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Arnon.

Mr. Opitz.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

In fact it all exists now. I've got a NEXUS card, and it didn't cost that much. I think it was about $50 U.S. to process this at the time. I got my fingerprints scanned without ink, just on an electronic scanner, the iris scan, and the photograph taken.

To your point, Mr. Bell, this is providing me with a tremendous amount of convenience getting through the airport lines fairly quickly, because this is a trusted traveller type of program. It does provide a lot of benefit to a lot of people who travel frequently and go between various countries. I found this to be an invaluable tool.

By the way, thank you all for coming, and DRDC as well. I worked with them peripherally in the past in my military days, and they're a tremendous organization that does some great scientific work on behalf of Canada. A lot of great work comes out of there.

I know you guys are leading-edge technical folks who are coming up with a lot of these innovations that will help keep Canada safe in the long run. And as many of us have discussed, one of the reasons we're talking about biometrics is from the security standpoint.

Mr. Meunier, you said you're the portfolio manager for surveillance, intelligence and interdiction, so you're working on biometrics from essentially a national security point of view, so I'm going to start with you, sir.

Overall, what is your opinion of biometrics and its effectiveness as a tool to prevent fraud and either apprehend or keep out of the country security threats of varying levels?

[Pierre Meunier]

There are a number of aspects to the effectiveness of biometrics. There's the policy side of things. There is the technology side of things. There are the standard operating procedures that one might use to control the flow of people and provide the interdiction and get the intelligence and get a system to work as a whole with the various departments that do the collection of biometrics.

The best example I've seen so far is that of our neighbour to the south. They have invested a lot in the development of biometrics. We owe them a great debt for that, because otherwise the technology wouldn't have evolved as quickly. They've also provided a model for us to follow in various aspects, integrating databases of the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT, and the FBI. We saw that model in action in a recent visit to eight agencies in the U.S. that collect and manage biometrics. I was very impressed. It does work. It works very well. It's a matter of implementing the right policies and procedures, in my view.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

When you observed that system, did they talk about the numbers of security threats or some sort of quantifiable indicator of its effectiveness against security threats?

[Pierre Meunier]

Oh, yes, indeed. There was a whole list. If you want to talk to the folks in the US-VISIT program, they can tell you how many thousands and hundreds of thousands are refused access or refused work. Once the system is integrated like this, it works very well and it's effective. My assessment is that it was very effective.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

What do you think are still some of the specific deficiencies that exist here with regard to the identification of foreign nationals? Would you make any recommendations to CIC and CBSA?

[Pierre Meunier]

I would not make recommendations as such to CIC. I think they're definitely on the right track. They've been at it for a number of years. They've done a good job, in my view, of integrating the pieces they need.

I can't comment on the policies or the standard operating procedures. I'm just looking at the architecture and the various components they bring together. All the elements are there. In Canada we may be a little bit late out of the gate in using biometrics, but that give us an advantage, in that we're starting from the second or third generation, if you will, and ramping right up to a high level of technology.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

When you were in the States you saw the electronic travel authorization, the entry and exit with the perimeter agreement. Would you agree that will be an effective element in making sure our borders on both sides are protected?

[Pierre Meunier]

My opinion and my feelings are that it will be.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

It's an opinion, sure.

Mr. Bell—just quickly, because I think I'll run out of time soon—in terms of the equipment and development of equipment and economy of scale, my honourable friend mentioned the overall costs. When you develop this equipment and it gets widely distributed, would you agree that then any costs associated with it will tend to go down, based on distribution, use, and...?

[Robert Bell]

Certainly. I think that the costs of the individual sensors are low. A camera is about $500. You're looking at devices that cost $1,000 to $2,000 to capture fingerprints. So you're looking at quite inexpensive devices. We're not looking at a lot of border points in Canada. Would 600 be a good estimate of the number?

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Yes. So it's very relative. The capital cost of it all is fairly low, given the numbers of years it would be in service.

[Robert Bell]

I think so. I did actually do estimates for the deployment of face recognition through each of the border locations. It was a surprisingly low number for a national rollout of technology.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Monsieur Giguère.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Chair, my questions basically have to do with a practical issue. A security system has to ensure that we can monitor people who enter and leave, and that the person who enters with one document and one identity does not leave with another identity and another passport.

Even here in Canada, we have the so-called “real fakes”. Those are refugees who go to an Immigration Canada office, apply for a passport with a fake birth certificate and a fake driver’s licence, and receive the document.

One of those “real fakes” crossed the Canadian border and was intercepted at the American border in Seattle. He was getting ready to set off a bomb. Will our system be able to protect us against something like that? Will it be able to tell us when someone enters and, most importantly, when they leave? If they don’t leave, will a little red light go on and tell us that someone has entered Canada illegally?

[Robert Bell]

Those are very good questions.

You need integrity in the process all the way through. In one project we're working on right now.... The first thing to do is make sure that when you're issuing that secure document, you actually have real, authentic breeder documents. For example, is the driver's licence that is being provided an authentic driver's licence or not? There's quite a lot in the way of security features on that driver's licence. They can be easily authenticated—or not. If you're using a passport as a breeder document, you can authenticate the breeder document as a passport.

So if you take care to make sure first of all that the person can clearly say that he is who he is, and then you capture the biometrics so that you link those biometrics to that identity, then you've made a big step. Then, when that document is presented and the biometrics are authenticated at the border, we can tell whether that's the person or not.

We're helping to solve the problem of false documents and we're also helping to solve the problem of someone using someone else's document.

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Will you be able to guarantee that someone who enters Canada on a specific date is registered, and that a follow-up will be done to find out if the person left the country or not?

[Robert Bell]

The follow-up is a very important question. Right now in Canada I don't believe we have exit controls—

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

There isn’t one.

[Robert Bell]

—and if we don't have exit controls, then someone comes in and we don't know if they go out. In other countries where we're working, they're actually taking pictures and capturing the images of people coming in. Then, as the people go out, they're checking that face image again to see if it's the same person who came in. Other countries are facing this problem. We have not yet done that.