Mr. Speaker, with regard to part (a), an expenditure authority in the amount of $161 million has been provided by the Treasury Board Secretariat to design, develop and deploy Canada’s ePassport next generation suite of travel documents and all related printing equipment, software and infrastructure by October 2024. This amount includes costs payable to the Canadian Bank Note Company, CBN, for various project deliverables.
This amount represents the entire project budget, including to develop and deploy new printing equipment, the new passport design and the infrastructure required to produce the new passport, as well as salaries, accommodation refits and IT components. The cost of the redesign was not captured as a separate deliverable but was blended as part of the overall implementation costs payable to the CBN. As such, it is not possible to identify the specific cost of the passport redesign.
As of August 31, 2023, $81.9 million has been spent on the entire project.
With regard to part (b), as part of the project, Canada launched a competitive procurement process in June 2016, and on May 24, 2019, a contract was awarded to CBN to deliver this solution for the Government of Canada. CBN was responsible, per the contract, for developing the designs for the new passport following the decision on theme by the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, IRCC.
A passport is a secure travel document whose primary purpose is to enable Canadians to travel, preventing counterfeiting to maintain credibility and to ensure it is recognized at global borders. It remains the exclusive property of the Government of Canada despite being issued in the name of the client. Updating passports is a routine process based on industry standard best practices and standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
With regard to part (c), please refer to the response to part (a).