Information & Ethics committee  In fact, it could disappear tomorrow.

Information & Ethics committee  I do not know the organization's exact status.

Information & Ethics committee  There is the Personal Information Protection Act. As the committee has mentioned, the law must be changed to make it mandatory to disclose information leaks. I do not know whether the social insurance number is included in the act that... Where does that come from?

Information & Ethics committee  I think at the end of your statement you mentioned its effect on civil liberties, and that's the main concern there: it's a bit outside the field of identity theft. We're also concerned that it won't necessarily lead to the magic bullet, if you will, about identity theft, again because it's not just that someone gets a hold of your identification; it's also that it's very easy to then obtain credit.

Information & Ethics committee  Very briefly, I can say that I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to leave that trail and that there are more concerns about it, especially as you combine databases. It's possible you can cross-reference your calling records with your movements that day with all sorts of things, and I think there are more implications to this that can be bad in certain situations than we're thinking about.

Information & Ethics committee  Actually, even in English, PhoneBusters is a little old as a concept. When they started, the group was set up to deal with telephone fraud. It has evolved since and now receives complaints about identity theft. So the English name could well be replaced by something more appropriate.

Information & Ethics committee  It used to be an agency of the Ontario Provincial Police, but I think that now it also works with the RCMP. As I said, it is a little vague, it has evolved in the last few years. It would be best to check.

Information & Ethics committee  The FTC, at the moment, I believe, has not come out in favour of a similar situation in the States, with the Real ID Act. That idea was, again, that you would be able to use driver's licences that were approved and had a biometric in them for a lot of purposes in the United States, and I believe the FTC came out against it.

Information & Ethics committee  What the FTC does is funnel people to one place, so they say if you have a complaint about identity theft, please tell us, we'll take statistics—and they do. It's the number one hit when you Google identity theft; you get FTC's home page on identity theft. That's where people go.

Information & Ethics committee  I'd have to look and see. I think they came out against the Real ID Act, which is a biometric-type of solution, but I would have to double-check for you.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I know that's often demanded by financial institutions, and that does add a layer of double-checking, if you will. Part of the recommendation in the first report PIAC wrote on this was that businesses take a few more steps, simple steps like that, to try to verify identity.

Information & Ethics committee  It falls more in with the idea behind the privacy legislation, which is that you use the personal information only for the purposes for which it's been gathered. The social insurance number works like a key across so many different avenues.

Information & Ethics committee  That is the hard issue because you need a unique identifier. What you maybe don't need is a unique identifier that works for everybody. Why not have one for the credit bureaus, which is the credit bureau type of number? In order to identify yourself for credit, you become whatever this long stream of numbers is, for the purpose of credit.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much. I'm here today on behalf of the Canadian Consumer Initiative, which is a group of six consumer organizations, including the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, where I work; Union des consommateurs; Option consommateurs, in Quebec; the Automobile Protection Association; and the Alberta Council on Aging.

Finance committee  I don't believe you're going to have that kind of flight, but I'll let him answer.