Mr. Chair, this is the Christmas season and people are very busy shopping for Christmas. I think the main payment source people in Canada use is the credit card. We know that there are 50 million credit cards in circulation for only Visa and MasterCard and 600 institutions issue Visa and MasterCard. There are also many other kinds of credit cards.
When looking into the credit card issue, two issues come to mind. One is the high interest rate and the other is credit card fraud.
I will focus my question on credit card fraud. It was reported, and admitted by the RCMP, that financial losses due to credit card fraud came to the tune of about $200 million last year in Canada. According to another report on consumers and businesses, overall losses due to digital fraud amount to about $14 billion U.S.
We also know that it is the organized criminals who are behind this credit card fraud. I know that because I was a member of the justice subcommittee on organized crime. I heard an eye-opening presentation from the RCMP. The RCMP was pleading with the lawmakers, the members of Parliament, to do something to provide the RCMP with enough resources so that it could compete with the state of the art technology used by the organized criminals.
On the one hand, the government is wasting billions of dollars on the gun registry and using the gun registry to chase the duck hunters. On the other hand, people are getting away with serious crimes like organized crime, particularly digital crime or credit card fraud.
My first question for the hon. member would be this. Would he not chase the criminals who are committing fraud deliberately and knowingly and in an organized manner duping the Canadian economy? Or would his first priority be chasing the peaceful duck hunters by using the gun registry?
My second issue is this. This issue has not been brought forward. It is about identity theft fraud. There are companies in Canada boasting that they are selling high quality products, those products being fake IDs. There is a company called Digital Products, formerly called Photo-ID. It boasts on its website that it is selling fake driving licences for 7 provinces of Canada, 34 U.S. states, and 6 Australian states and territories. It also boasts that it is selling high quality products with hologram and magnetic strips. Looking at the card, it is hard to distinguish if the card is fake or an original identity card sold or provided by a province of a state.
Law enforcement officials cannot do anything about it because they cannot charge anyone until the fake ID card is actually used. To produce and sell fake ID cards is okay according to our law.
We also know that fake ID cards, particularly a driver's licence, can be used for buying airline tickets and boarding a plane.
What is the magnitude of the gravity of the situation? It is serious.
Would the member not urge his government to do something about identity theft? Even possessing or making a fake ID card should be a crime in this country, because there is no good intention behind making a high quality fake ID card with holograms and magnetic strips. I would ask the member to urge the government to change that law.