Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. As I said earlier, we now have over 185 visa application centres. It's a good rollout and it's certainly consistent with countries like the U.K. It's a lot of locations in over 94 countries. We're not in every country in the world and we're not in every city in every

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Syria and Iraq do not have visa application centres, simply because it is too dangerous for us to staff those centres.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, there are.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There's Syria and Iraq. South Sudan might be one. There are a few where the country's condition is currently not such that we would feel comfortable sending a Government of Canada employee there to verify that all of the provisions are in place. That's unfortunate, but those cond

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's not something that we're pursuing at this time, but we've looked at all the models that we were able to examine in the world. It is valuable getting the biometric at the application stage to confirm that identity for future visits and then to allow future visits to happen wi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What we're doing now is taking 10 fingerprints and we would continue to do so.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I guess I would say there's always a chance of anything happening. The RCMP has been taking fingerprints, verifying fingerprints, and storing fingerprints for decades. It is the RCMP who will be storing our prints and doing all of the matching. The RCMP have people on

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We hope there will be efficiencies. That's part of the plan. To get those efficiencies, the foundation is to have that fingerprint on file. When you are screening millions of application forms using names, dates of birth, in certain countries certain surnames are shared by notice

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Someone with their biometrics on file who is crossing by car at the land border will be able to go into the facility and have their biometrics confirmed that way. Most of the traffic for Canadians and Americans, of course, will just continue at pace as it does now, but if

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The existing cost for biometric enrolment is $85. We anticipate that this cost will remain as is when we expand the program in 2018-19.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would suggest not. As we were saying just moments ago, we hope that in some cases it will facilitate travel for legitimate travellers. For previous clients using the biometric, it just confirms that they are who they say they are. It allows the visa officer to move on with ot

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There has been no such thing. There are 180 locations around the world. We audit those locations. There are stringent procedures they follow. There are small things that happen, the Wi-Fi will go out for a few hours or what have you, but there's been no breach of personal informa

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For an American citizen coming here to visit, no. For an American citizen who wants to become a permanent resident of Canada, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For citizens of the U.K. coming here to visit their sister, no, they do not have to hand over biometrics, just as we do not have to hand over biometrics to them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The United States, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand are all now using biometrics in their immigration screening in their border management programs. There are differences in how they do that given different contexts, different migration patterns. Some are islands, some have l