Foreign Affairs committee  Well, there isn't an act.

Foreign Affairs committee  The responsibility of the minister for the conduct of consular affairs.

Foreign Affairs committee  In response to your earlier question, as I said, there is no statute. Canadians who are unhappy with consular services can and do raise their concerns ex post facto. Some do it through their member of Parliament. Some do it by writing to the minister. Some do it by telephone. We

Foreign Affairs committee  If they write to the minister, the letter will be forwarded to the consular services, and if we have to go back to a post to get clarification on how the Canadian was served at the post, we do so. We get an awful lot of correspondence and we do get concerns about service--not tha

Foreign Affairs committee  My colleague will probably say a few words, too, but basically, as we've said, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the services. We do have, in particular, a very structured process of lessons learned for large events. Also, within the last two years, since the branch w

Foreign Affairs committee  When a family is in another country and the parents are not divorced, the issue is under the jurisdiction of the other country. In that case, it is in the other country's legal system. I am going to explain my colleague to explain this for you in more detail.

Foreign Affairs committee  At present there are about 650 child abduction cases, as my colleague mentioned.

Foreign Affairs committee  These are children who are in another country because they were taken there by one of the parents. However, if the other parent stayed here, in Canada, and wants the child to be returned home to them, their primary tool is the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Internation

Foreign Affairs committee  We do have repeat customers. Also, last year we made it easier for people. It used to be a paper-based system, but now people can register online as of last year. We did have some teething problems with the software because it didn't work on all platforms, but now it seems to wor

Foreign Affairs committee  We have in the past—we did one last year—held joint briefings with parliamentary staffers on both the consular and the passport program. We're always willing and open to do that, because it enables us to provide our publications and it enables us to reach out directly to constitu

Foreign Affairs committee  On how many Canadians register, the short answer is—I'm just looking through my statistics here—it's not as many as we would like. We would like every Canadian to register abroad. I think it's about 3 million, but I'll verify and get back to you on it. The pattern is that peopl

Foreign Affairs committee  The branch was established in October 2007. The emergency management bureau, which is part of the branch, was established a little under one year later. The three of us who are here from Foreign Affairs are the directors general of the three bureaus in the branch.

Foreign Affairs committee  Below high school age, most travel decisions are made by parents. You need to be 16 before you can sign for your own passport. But we try to reach out to the high schools and the universities. We're trying all kinds of new tricks. We now have a maze on our consular website where

Foreign Affairs committee  No.

Foreign Affairs committee  No.