Evidence of meeting #26 for Public Accounts in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was passports.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Executive Officer, Passport Canada
In some parts of the country it still happens, if I may say so. What it means, particularly if they decide to go by car to the United States—this is still something that will happen....
We anticipate that the whole year will be fairly busy, but as I said, we're monitoring demand on a daily basis and we're making adjustments. We adjust our financial forecast every three months in order to adjust. Constant vigilance is going to be the motto for this year.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
One of the changes that interested me—actually, it affected me personally, and perhaps this is a response to some of the security concerns the Auditor General brought up—is that children now need to hold their own passport. What was the rationale behind this change? I reapplied for my passport assuming I could just put my children on it as well, as I used to in the past, and I found out that, no, they each need their own passports now.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Bureau, Passport Canada
That's been a requirement since 2002. It was a change to bring us to international standards. Children used to be allowed to be added to a parent's passport. It wasn't something we encouraged. It was cumbersome. The child could only travel with that parent, but couldn't be on both parents' passports.
We made the change in 2002 with a number of policy changes. It is a major initiative to help reduce child smuggling and to protect the integrity of children and their identities and their safety. We found it to be very effective.
It was a surprise when it first happened, but it's been really very effective.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Maybe as a revenue generator as well: I have three kids.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Bureau, Passport Canada
Well, we lose money on every child's passport.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I'd like to go back to this high-security electronic passport. We've talked about it a little bit. What is it exactly? What does it look like?
Chief Executive Officer, Passport Canada
We have the expert on the e-passport here. In fact, Mr. McDonald sits on a committee at ICAO .
What I would simply say is that it has a chip inside that has the same information that you have on page 3 of your passport; that's the tombstone data and the picture. That's what it is, and it is read at borders.
I will let Mr. McDonald give you a good understanding of it.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Also, what are the development costs of it, and how is it being funded?
Director General, Policy and Planning Bureau, Passport Canada
Thank you.
The electronic passport looks very much like a standard passport. It has a chip embedded in either the front or the back cover. Different countries approach it differently. It has the data, as Madam Desloges explained.
It certainly makes the document itself more tamper-proof, because now you have to go beyond simply.... If you did want to tamper with a passport, you'd have to also be able to change the information on the chip, and it is extremely difficult to do so. It adds a layer of security to the book.
Having the photo on the chip also allows border officials, if they choose to do so, and many are starting now to do so, to link the booklet to the individual who's standing in front of them. They can use facial-recognition technology at the border to match the person who's standing in front of them with the photo that has been securely stored on the chip. You create this linkage between the booklet and the person who's presenting it.
As for development costs, budget 2008 provided Passport Canada with $65 million to develop and introduce the e-passport.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Are you considering lengthening the amount of time that this particular passport will be valid, increasing from five to ten years?
Director General, Policy and Planning Bureau, Passport Canada
Yes. The announcement was that we would produce a ten-year e-passport by 2011.
Liberal
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Bureau, Passport Canada
It will increase the security of the document, and the tools we're putting in place, because of the lengthened validity, will, we think, increase the security of our entitlement processes as well.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
What if individual circumstances change; will you be aware of it within that timeframe? And what if technology changes, for that matter? Ten years is a long time to have a document in the system.
Director General, Policy and Planning Bureau, Passport Canada
From a technology point of view, there is an international standard for e-passports. It was developed by the member states, Canada included, of ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN specialized agency headquartered in Montreal. There are about 60 countries now issuing e-passports. All issue their e-passports to that specification.
The working group, the subgroup at ICAO that developed those specifications, continues to meet and to explore how new technologies could be added to the current specification and how we could leverage the existing specification for the future.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
How will it affect the business plan? Right now you're looking at revenues turning over every five years, and hereafter it will be every ten.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
You can respond, I think, even though I can't ask anything more.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
You've put your finger on an interesting subject. Indeed, part of the work that needs to be done going forward is to cost out the new passport, its delivery and so forth. That work is under way.
Right now we have the commitment and we have the initial funding in the budget to develop it. There will need to be some work done now on funding it over the longer term.
Stay tuned, as I would say.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you so much.
Just a comment, first of all, Chair. I don't get to come to public accounts very often, so I'm happy to be here today. But I'm disappointed that we're dealing with such a good response to a report that Mr. Christopherson got to just be himself today. This is unfair to me. Please let me know, next time, before I sign up.
I take it the steps you've put in place.... Well, you now know where your bumps are. You've described it as a crisis, as a pretty serious situation. Five years from now, or five years less six months from now, you'll be starting to deal with that hump all over again. I guess knowing it's out there makes it a little easier to deal with at this time, but you'll take that into account, I take it.
We've had some other questions about how you deal with that. You know it's there, and you know that this year is a pretty busy year; the WHTI second phase has come in and you're going to stay fairly busy all this year.
Do you expect a slow couple of years and then a rev back up? Or how do you address this?
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Sitting where I do, in the deputy's chair, this is why I have top executives running the passport agency. Obviously it's a huge management challenge that you've put your finger on, and it does, I think, require a lot of talent in the executive chair.
Certainly this year, with the introduction of WHTI at the land border, there will be some very high demand, and I think we're seeing it now in the figures and so on.
Indeed, going back to some earlier questions, we've wanted to ensure that we do not encounter the same problems we had in 2007, which means that we have the new processes, the print plant, and the staff in place to deal with that kind of demand. There is a little bit of redundancy built in so that we can deal with spikes and so forth. Of course, we have in place the management of overtime and temporary help and so forth to ensure that we don't have so much redundancy that we're making bad management decisions.
So that's this year. Going forward, the strategic view is that, first of all, we're moving to the ten-year e-passport. That will impact upon demand and so forth. It's why I responded a little earlier that we still need to work out the business case, the costing and so forth, of all of that.
I think with the trends in Canada towards people using the passport almost as an identity document--we're talking about 53% or 54% nationally, and in some parts of the country much higher, out west and in urban areas and so on--the passport is becoming a bit more than a travel document. So there too we have to deal with that kind of trend in our projections.
All I can do is assure you that we have all of these factors very much in play. The coming years with Passport Canada will be challenging ones as we move to this new kind of format and we deal with the fact that, as I said, many Canadians see the passport as more than a travel document.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Okay.
I have one more quick question, if I may, for Ms. Fraser.
In 2005 this department had some pretty big issues. In 2007 you revisited them. Much had been completed, but there was still a ways to go. Then we really moved into a serious overload of passports. In 2009 they've done great work and it's completed.
Are you going to leave them alone for a couple of years?
