:
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee will commence the study of the Auditor General of Canada's February 2007 status report, chapter 6, “The Management of the Social Insurance Number”.
I want to welcome our witnesses today.
First we'll hear from the Office of the Auditor General, followed by the Department of Human Resources and Social Development, followed by the Treasury Board. I think you all know how everything works around here, so I don't need to explain microphones or anything else. We'll give you seven or eight minutes for your opening statements and then we'll start with questioning, starting on the opposition side and moving ourselves around the table to the government side.
I want to welcome everyone here once again.
Ms. Fraser, if you'd like to, please start with your opening statement, and thank you for being here today.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting us to discuss chapter 6 of our February status report on the management of the social insurance number.
I am accompanied by Nancy Cheng, assistant auditor general, and Nick Swales, the director responsible for this audit.
As you know, the social insurance number is a unique nine-digit number issued to Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents working in Canada. It is used to record income, taxes paid, and contribution to government benefit plans, and it is also used in providing access to many government services. Service Canada issues social insurance numbers and maintains the social insurance register, which is the database that contains the basic personal information of people who apply for a social insurance number.
When we met with this committee last June to discuss our previous work on the management of the social insurance number, we indicated we were planning an audit to assess what progress had been made on recommendations from our 2002 audit of the social insurance number. That audit was itself a follow-up on earlier recommendations, so this year's report is our fourth audit on the management of the social insurance number since 1998. I am pleased to be able to discuss the results of our most recent audit with you today.
[Translation]
We found that Service Canada had taken action in many areas to address deficiencies we identified in 2002. It has improved the assignment procedure of SINs by strengthening the standards for establishing identity, citizenship and proof of need before issuing a SIN, by adding an expiry date to 900-series SINs, and by redesigning its process for assigning SINs. Service Canada has also improved its approach to SIN investigations. Investigations are now identified more from indicators of risk, and SIN investigators have access to better training and tools.
There is still work to be done in these areas, notably by completing the links necessary for Service Canada to validate birth, death and citizenship information with the provinces and with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Nonetheless, our assessment has shown progress in these areas since our 2002 audit to be satisfactory.
However, our conclusion overall was that the government has not made satisfactory progress in addressing our 2002 recommendations because two significant concerns that we noted as long ago as 1998 have still not been solved.
[English]
Our first concern is that Service Canada still does not have adequate assurance about the quality of information in the social insurance register. It has not determined how accurate, complete, and reliable the data should be and it does not have a systematic means for measuring data quality. We consider this to be an important weakness, particularly since Service Canada is increasingly using the register to identify people accessing its services.
The second problem is that the Treasury Board policy on the use of the social insurance number is not sufficiently clear. The policy has not been updated since it was issued in 1989, even though Treasury Board Secretariat completed a study in 2003 that confirmed the existence of various gaps in its policies and procedures on use of the social insurance number. Our concern is that the lack of clarity leads to inconsistent application of policy requirements, thereby increasing the risk of inappropriate use of the social insurance number.
We did find that Service Canada and Treasury Board Secretariat have made progress in better understanding these problems since 2002, but it is our opinion that the government should have implemented solutions by this time.
[Translation]
We are pleased that the Treasury Board Secretariat, Human Resources and Social Development Canada and Service Canada agree with our recommendations and committed to action, in several cases by as early as this past March. The committee members may wish to ask Service Canada whether it has met these goals and whether it and the Treasury Board Secretariat are on target to complete the rest of their actions as planned.
Mr. Chairman that concludes my opening statement. We will be pleased to answer your committee's questions.
Thank you.
:
Mr. Chair, thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee about the Auditor General's status report on the management of the social insurance number and the ongoing efforts of Service Canada to strengthen the integrity of the SIN and the social insurance register.
I'm joined today by Onno Kremers, director general, Identity Management Services.
[Translation]
The SIN is an important element of Service Canada's vision for providing Canadians with seamless service focused on their needs. That is one of the reasons why we commissioned a review by PriceWaterhouseCoopers early last year to assess the progress we have made since the Auditor General's 2002 report. PWC concluded that the actions we were taking had increased the effectiveness and efficiency of processes, and has resulted in improved controls and an increased level of integrity within both the SIN and the SIR.
PWC also identified areas for improvement and we are focusing on those at this time as we address the recommendations of the Auditor General.
[English]
Mr. Chair, the first issue I'd like to discuss is the appropriate use of the SIN. The government's ongoing response to this issue is twofold.
First, it involves making sure that government policy on how the SIN should be used by departments is up to date and clear. My colleagues from the Treasury Board Secretariat will speak to this issue.
On a specific matter raised in the audit, I would like to mention that the Treasury Board has authorized the use of the SIN in the youth employment strategy program administered by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.
[Translation]
The other important aspect of the Government's response is explaining to SIN holders how the SIN should be used so that they can better protect their personal information. Service Canada developed the SIN Code of Practice. The Code provides practical guidance and tools, and is available on our website.
[English]
A second key area of SIN management is the issuance process. We have implemented a new process, SIN rapid access, which makes it faster, simpler, and more secure to obtain a SIN. As part of this new approach, our citizen service agents issuing SINs have received mandatory training and certification.
[Translation]
In addition, we are accepting only proof of identity documents, such as a birth certificate, in support of a SIN application. We have also introduced expiry dates on SINs issued to temporary residents—the 900-series. This date is linked to their stay in Canada.
[English]
One of our goals is to have access to provincial vital events information at the time of SIN application. At present, we have agreements with New Brunswick, Ontario, British Columbia, and recently Alberta. We'll be introducing real-time data validation with Ontario and British Columbia this year. Work is proceeding with the remaining provinces and the territories to conclude similar agreements. We already have real-time access to immigration information for all temporary workers and permanent residents.
We have established a new SIN at birth service within Ontario and in B.C. This service combines three processes into one: registering a birth, applying for a birth certificate, and applying for a social insurance number. This makes it much simpler and less time-consuming for parents of newborns to obtain their child's important documents. It's a good example of Service Canada's vision of a seamless, client-centred service.
A third key area of SIN management is the integrity of the information in the social insurance register. Obviously, Mr. Chair, the improvements I have described in issuing SINs contribute directly to better information integrity through more rigour in the application process. As well, our vital events agreements allow us to obtain timely and accurate birth and death data from the provinces to improve the integrity of information held by the register.
[Translation]
As a further safeguard, we also placed dormant flags on SINs that have not been used for five years. Our latest annual dormant run was completed in January.
[English]
In addition, we are setting goals for register accuracy and completeness to understand how effective our measures to improve its integrity have been and to identify what further measures are still needed. To do this, we are first determining the current level of accuracy of key data. We will then determine the potential cost to federal programs of any errors, which will allow us to set goals. Once established, we will regularly monitor and report on our progress.
[Translation]
Service Canada will also continue to refine its risk-based approach to SIN-related investigations, which often result in corrections to the information in the Register.
[English]
Mr. Chair, I would like to take a moment to comment on the number of usable SINs compared to the population that is over 30 years old and resident in Canada.
As you know, there are significant numbers of Canadians who are studying or working or have retired outside the country who have SINs and may not be counted in population estimates. In fact, recent studies estimate that a sizable portion of the Canadian population is actually living abroad. Depending on how long these SIN holders have been away, their SINs may have been flagged as dormant.
Mr. Chair, the important point is that because SIN holders living abroad are not counted in population estimates, the total number of SIN holders will always be greater than the comparable population living in Canada. It is also important to remember that having a SIN does not automatically entitle anyone to program payments. It is just one of many controls. Applicants must also prove that they meet entitlement criteria specific to each program before receiving a payment. For example, to receive employment insurance, you must have separate proof that you have worked in insurable employment, have had your earnings interrupted, and have worked enough hours to qualify. Nonetheless, the SIN is one of our key program controls, and accordingly, its integrity is important. That is why we are taking all the measures I have described to strengthen the SIR. That is why we are seeking vital events agreements, and that is why we put risk flags on inactive SINs. In our view, and as the Auditor General has reported, we are heading in the right direction on this issue.
Mr. Chair, let me conclude by saying that we are pleased that the Auditor General has recognized the significant progress we have made since 2002 in many areas of SIN management. We also acknowledge that there are other areas where we can do better, and we are working hard on them.
Thank you, and we welcome the opportunity to answer any questions the committee may have.
:
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
My name is Jim Alexander, and I'm the deputy chief information officer at Treasury Board Secretariat. I'm accompanied today by Donald Lemieux, who is the executive director of the information and privacy policy division.
On behalf of Treasury Board Secretariat, I would like to begin by thanking the committee for this opportunity to discuss the role of Treasury Board Secretariat with regard to the management of the social insurance number.
We were called here today to talk about the recommendations from the Office of the Auditor General and how Treasury Board Secretariat is progressing in addressing them. I trust that all members of the committee have received copies of the deck that we provided to the clerk earlier.
As shown in slide 2 of the presentation, the OAG recommended that Treasury Board Secretariat should update the policy framework governing the use of the social insurance number by March 31, 2008, and ensure that the policy instruments governing the use of the SIN in the federal government close the gaps identified in the 2003 review.
As TBS indicated in the response to the recommendations, TBS is committed to updating and clarifying the policy requirements governing the use of the SIN in the federal government by March 31, 2008.
I'll discuss TBS's commitments in more detail later in the presentation. However, I'd first like to provide a general overview of the accountability structure for the management of the SIN. This will help to position Treasury Board Secretariat's privacy role with respect to the SIN, and then I'll provide an outline of TBS's policy renewal process as it relates to the SIN policy components.
On slide 3, the President of the Treasury Board, as designated minister under the Privacy Act, is responsible for developing and issuing privacy policy, including those components that govern how federal departments collect and use the SIN. The current policy components on the use of the SIN are part of the policy manual and guidelines on privacy and data protection. TBS privacy policies also provide direction and guidance on data matching, processing of privacy requests, and the conduct of privacy impact assessments. It should also be noted that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada monitors compliance with the Privacy Act, and as such, monitors SIN use by government institutions that are subject to the Privacy Act.
On slide 4, the SIN was conceived as an efficient tool for facilitating the comparing of data. In other words, the SIN was to be used for data-matching purposes within the federal government. The government's privacy policy components on the SIN were intended to ensure that there would be limits on SIN use at the federal level, as it could easily be used as a tool to link personal information held by various government institutions. The policy was intended to mitigate this risk. The policy components do not, nor were they ever intended to, address the reliability of the social insurance number or the integrity of the social insurance register, or the collection and use of the social insurance number in the private sector or in other jurisdictions.
On slide 5, in 2002, TBS, with the assistance of an interdepartmental committee, initiated a government-wide review of SIN and data matching. The review involved approximately 160 government institutions. The objectives of the review were to determine how and why federal institutions were using the SIN, to identify and review all current uses of the SIN by federal institutions, to propose the necessary revisions to data matching and SIN components of the policy, and to provide a final report with recommendations to the President of the Treasury Board. In 2003, a final report was presented to the then Treasury Board president, who instructed TBS officials to proceed with developing a draft revised policy in accordance with those recommendations.
On slide 6, in 2004, TBS needed to address the immediate privacy concerns related to transborder data flows and risks related to the U.S.A. Patriot Act. TBS launched, therefore, a government-wide review, which culminated in the publishing of the Privacy Matters report and guidance in 2006. This report outlined the results of the review and presented the government's strategy to address possible privacy risks posed by foreign legislation, namely the U.S.A. Patriot Act. The Privacy Commissioner expressed support for this strategy and the resulting documents that came out as guidance.
Despite being pulled on other priorities, TBS remains very committed to clarifying those policy gaps identified in 2003. For example, the current SIN policy was silent on the use of the SIN for purposes related to statistical research, audit, and evaluation purposes. Also, clarification was needed with respect to use of the SIN in the context of cross-jurisdictional personal information sharing agreements.
TBS intends to clarify what constitutes authorized use of the SIN for any new purpose. As indicated in our response to the Auditor General, we are committed to completing this work by March 2008.
On slide 7, the review and renewal of the SIN components of the TBS privacy policy were subsumed under the broader TBS effort to renew its entire policy suite. The objectives of this policy renewal are to clarify management responsibilities and accountabilities; establish a clear distinction between the duties of deputy heads and those of functional experts; create an integrated and streamlined consolidated policy infrastructure that is coherent across the policies; and establish an organizational structure to ensure that the policies, including the SIN policy requirements, remain current, relevant, and clear as changes happen. As such, it was important to align the SIN and data-matching policy work within the broader context of the TBS policy work.
Slide 8 speaks to the renewal process and timelines. In terms of the revision to the SIN and data-matching policy components, we've already undertaken extensive consultations with other federal institutions through a secretariat-led interdepartmental committee. We've also obtained the views of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner on the proposed revisions to the SIN and data-matching policy components, as well as areas of improvement for the privacy impact assessment policy. As indicated in the TBS response to the OAG, Mr. Chair, the secretariat will ensure that the TBS policy requirements governing the use of the SIN in the federal government are updated and clarified by March 31, 2008, to close those gaps identified in the 2003 secretariat review.
I've also included, for reference in the deck, an annex that lists the legislated uses of the SIN as well as other authorized uses of the SIN in the federal government.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for your attention. I would be pleased to respond to any questions or clarifications.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank our witnesses for the information they have provided us. It is most helpful. I'm increasingly surprised at the extent to which the social insurance number was used.
My first question is to the officials. Last June, I believe, you appeared before the committee and you told us that you had given an independent audit firm the task of looking into the integrity of the social insurance number, among other things. I believe you went to PriceWaterhouseCoopers and that you are pleased with the effectiveness of the measures implemented and confirmed by the company.
However, you touched very briefly and very superficially on the areas that require improvement. Could you tell us very specifically what PriceWaterhouseCoopers found, and tell us whether they were the same points that the Auditor General had already raised? What are the issues? If not, how can we distinguish between the two sets of issues identified?
I'm not going to chase the security angle of this, because I think it's been covered. I want to understand how what you found might in some significant way impede the delivery of service to citizens.
For example, in the last year or so, through conversation and in listening to people who come into my office, I've discovered there are senior retirees, literally hundreds of thousands of them, who aren't accessing the programs they're qualified to receive. It seems to me there has to be a better way of informing those folks that there's a program and they don't have to live in poverty. They could access it, they paid into it, and they should automatically be getting it.
If we decided as a government to move to a system where we in fact began to be proactive on the CPP, OAS, GIS, etc., would the problems you've discovered with the SIN process and the program support that, or would there be a problem in doing it?
I have a further question on this. I'm wracking my brain to understand why we didn't move to this previously. I think they do it in Quebec. In Quebec they actually contact people to make sure they're getting what they need.
Maybe they're not doing it because they don't have the confidence in the SIN number that they should have—and by “they”, I mean government—to actually move to begin to deliver that kind of program across the country.
I refer the committee to an audit we did on the old age security program, which was tabled in November 2006. In fact, we looked at the whole question of how proactive the government had been in informing senior citizens and citizens in general about the benefits they could receive. We noted in that audit that in the last two or three years the government had put much more attention into that and been much more proactive. We noted that there had been quite a bit of improvement.
I think one recommendation we made was that they still weren't tracking very well the potential numbers of people who could be receiving the benefits and looking at how well their outreach activities were working. But there had been improvement in the last few years.
We also noticed that they used the Canada Revenue Agency database, for example, for the guaranteed income supplement, which is an error. I think there were a lot of questions raised about people who needed it not applying for it and receiving it. But I don't believe that would necessarily resolve the issues with the social insurance number and the register.
Before 1976 the process around applications and receiving a number were not as rigorous, and certainly not as rigorous as they are today. In fact, many people have told me they received a new social insurance number every time they had a summer job. So people could have more than one social insurance number--duplicates--that they received over time. It's a question of cleaning up the register.
The links to vital statistics in the provinces will also give better information to be able to take out numbers for people who are deceased. Then there's the whole question of people who have emigrated from the country whose numbers may still be in the register.
So it's a question of actually improving the quality of the information in there and maintaining it over time. I don't think it would really resolve the issue. Obviously some files might become active if people haven't applied for benefits to which they are entitled. They would have to reactivate their numbers.
:
I had a meeting in Sault Ste. Marie just this past week, and about 75 people showed up because they were concerned that they weren't receiving the benefits to which they were entitled. In fact, we found a couple in that bunch.
When you did the review I think there were over 300,000. We still have over 100,000 who are not getting their GIS, according to Stats Canada and the information we have at our disposal.
I'm particularly concerned about families who come into my office after the death of their parents and discover, in trying to tie up the estates, that they actually qualified for Canada Pension or OAS. They had never received it and lived in some pretty desperate poverty. In some instances, they had actually gone in to see if they qualified and were told they didn't.
Would that have anything to do with some of the inadequacies or shortcomings of the SIN system we have in place? Why aren't we able to track these people and identify more quickly whether they are or aren't qualified? Why do we have so many people out there who qualify for some things but are told they don't? At the end of the day we have families weeping over the conditions in which some of these folks had to live before they died--living in poverty because they didn't get what they had coming to them.
:
The Auditor General, in all the reports done by her office on the social insurance number, has done a comparison, as I mentioned in my opening statement, of the population resident in Canada over a certain age and the number of SINs that are held. As I pointed out, not surprisingly there are more SIN holders than there are Canadian citizens in the country, because an awful lot of Canadians, we've discovered, and studies tell us, are expatriate and living abroad. And they would have left with their social insurance numbers.
I wouldn't propose to the speak for the Auditor General, but I think the theme of those reports was whether the government has considered what this might mean: Have you looked at the risks it poses? Are you trying to work away at the excess?
I think that's prompted a lot of good action. As was mentioned earlier, there were five million excess SINs, in the language of the Auditor General, a huge portion of which were dormant, in 2002. That number has come down considerably. The number in the report was 2.9 million, 2.1 million of which were flagged as dormant, leaving a difference of roughly 100,000 SINs. We think that is probably explained as people who are simply not in the country right now and haven't been gone for more than five years, so have not yet been flagged as dormant. They will be if they stay away longer, or they'll return and start showing up again.
Through the vital events agreements, through the deactivation of more than a million 900-series SINs, and because of the questions posed by the Auditor General on the excess, we've managed to clean and do some really good work in improving the integrity of the SIR. It's one of those things where the two numbers will never match, and our job is to continue to find ways to improve that integrity.
I think we've taken the big steps. The steps that will come in the future will be smaller steps, and they might be hard steps, so we have to keep working away at that.
:
Yes, Mr. Chair, we've been looking into this, prompted by the Auditor General, and there are two studies that have come to our attention.
The first was done roughly a year ago by the OECD, and it estimated that the number of Canadians living outside Canada--Canadians born in Canada who are living outside Canada in an OECD country--was roughly 1.5 million people, but that is only in OECD countries. There were concerns about the methodology, which the authors were only too happy to express, but it was an estimate.
A more recent piece of work by the Asia Pacific Foundation tells us that their estimate, based on Statistics Canada information, is something like 2.8 million people living outside Canada. So it tells us that an awful lot of Canadians are currently not in the country. They may come back, they may not.
We need to think about the risks that poses for our social programs and the risks it poses for the integrity of the SIR and take action in the way the Auditor General has described. We need to be consistent in how we deal with the dormant flag. It needs to work in all programs like it does in EI, and if it doesn't, then we have to have some control that mitigates that same risk.
:
Beginning with your second question, we do look at SIN-related fraud. An awful lot of it tends to be related to employment insurance. It's individuals who are on claim and are able to obtain, one way or another, an alternative identity through a social insurance number. And then they're able to work while on claim as someone else, either a fictitious identity or they borrowed someone else's. So they're collecting EI and they're working at the same time, and probably not remitting tax on their job. We investigate quite a few cases like that.
The risk profile for SIN fraud is one that's based on our business intelligence. We update it all the time. If we see individuals, for example, who come into our offices and they have a recently issued birth certificate from any of the provinces, and it's recently issued and they're more than 20, right away we want to send them to one of our investigators to have a chat, because that seems odd. It's hard to get to be 20 years old and not have received a birth certificate already.
If you haven't worked, if you haven't applied for a SIN and you're over 20...there are a number of risk flags that we're constantly working with, and we provide that information to our staff in the field.
At the same time, we're constantly updating our training. I mentioned a certification program for staff on the identification of fraudulent documents, so that someone can't come in and obtain a SIN fraudulently using a false birth certificate.
Thank you to the witnesses today.
I want to just talk a bit more about the register. In the Auditor General's report, in February, she says in the preamble:
While the Department has continued its efforts to improve the Social Insurance Register...its progress is unsatisfactory. It has set no goals for the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of the data, and its measurement of data quality has been unsystematic and limited in scope.
And it goes on to say, among other things, in more detail:
...Service Canada currently has no goals for data accuracy, completeness, and reliability, and we consider the lack of systematic and comprehensive measurement of the Register's data quality a significant risk....
And you highlight this weakness again today.
Mr. Simeoni, I think in your presentation you referred to the register, indicating:
...we are setting goals for Register accuracy and completeness to understand how effective our measures.... To do this, we are first determining the current level of accuracy of key data. We will then determine the potential cost....
I would like to ask the Auditor General if she has anything further on that, but then I'd like to ask Mr. Simeoni to give us a schedule on how this is. In terms of setting goals, that seems pretty basic, in the sense that we can't go where we need to go if we don't know exactly where we are.
So I'd just like some more detail on those two things, if the Auditor General has anything else to add on that. If not, then I would go directly to Mr. Simeoni.
:
Mr. Chair, a small digression.
I mentioned earlier that we have not set goals, that we need to set goals, and that we're working on setting goals. But the department chose, over the past four years, to fix the process by which SINs were issued to make sure all future SINs after 2002 had it; we were sure of their integrity. So that was a management decision.
We think we're doing all the right things to maintain and improve the integrity of the SIR, including pursuing those vital events agreements. As far as setting goals goes, it would be tempting--and we've looked at other jurisdictions like the United States, for example, the social security administration—to pick a number like 99%, or 99.5%, and even then on a database as large as the SIR, you would be talking about an awful lot of inaccurate fields, even at 0.5%.
But we need to understand first what an error really means. Does it matter that for my birthday, say, the numbers are transposed in the SIR if no federal government program operates on day but rather month and year, for example? We need to understand better how the information is used, what a critical error is, and a far less critical error, and then set our goals for accuracy based on that. We are in the midst of that study right now, and we will have goals set by this fall.
:
Mr. Chairman, you know as well as I do that members of Parliament find it very difficult to read everything we need to be able to keep abreast of issues. Of course, we try to be disciplined and read the Auditor General's report, because it governs us and our conduct and lets us know whether things are functioning properly.
When you came before the committee last year, you said that you were doing an audit of something that I thought the Auditor General had already audited. I thought that the firm was probably going to audit something else. As you said earlier, PriceWaterhouseCoopers audited, I believe, two aspects that the Auditor General had already noted: what progress had been made and whether the steps taken were adequate.
Chapter 6 of this year's Auditor General's report contains a table with the AG's recommendations and the progress made in each area. It was good to see that progress had been achieved in some areas, but some of the other areas were also audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Why was an outside firm asked to audit the same things as the Auditor General, and even the results were the same? That is why I am trying to understand.
I have a couple of quick, to the point questions. Is there any certain segment of the population that is underrepresented in the uptake or applications of SINs in the country--new Canadians or people in remote locations or aboriginal people in particular--and if there is, why is that?
I know you referenced some foundation documents, and coincidentally I had a question. This is a status Indian card, and I don't know if they're accepted or not. I was asked that question by an applicant. Getting photo ID in some of our remote communities, even for voting purposes, is next to impossible when they're isolated.
Have any of those barriers been identified, and have any efforts been made to overcome them somehow?
:
Just to the Auditor General again, and it's off topic, but since we have you here--I think I did this the last time. You've done a review of passports. It's a real fiasco out there. I don't know if you're watching it or not, but I know that anybody who is trying to manage or run a constituency office is inundated--me, two or three people sometimes, full-time, flat out. This past Easter weekend I had a staffer in for a day and a half trying to find a passport for somebody who was going to Italy who had applied in December and who reapplied in February. They sent out the passport on the Thursday before Easter; it didn't show up. They were leaving on the Monday. I and one of my staffers and three post offices that were shut for the weekend were looking for this passport. We had the Prime Minister's office, the Foreign Affairs office, and a guy named Bill, who was on duty for the weekend. He was the guy answering all the questions, but he couldn't do anything; he had no power to do anything, no authority. I didn't ask him where he was; maybe he was in India or some place, I'm not quite sure.
It's such a waste of resources. If we could only get this thing fixed....
You had identified some issues, but you were concerned about security. I think in some ways we've allowed security to overwhelm almost everything now to the point where we can't find the flexibility anymore to do what we need to do to service our constituents--real, honest, hard-working, ordinary Canadian citizens who need a passport, who are going away, who have done all the right things but can't get it. There are parts of the country, rural and northern Canada, where we have no passport offices and people are actually driving 12 hours to get there to find out that they can't get a passport anyway because the rules won't allow it. For example, for an emergency passport now, apparently somebody has to have died. I know that wasn't a recommendation you made, but it's an interpretation that is now being put in by some people. We just don't get them. I feel at the very least those of us who live in northern and rural Canada are really being discriminated against.
Have you followed up any further or done anything more on that? I know you said at that point you were.
:
I will call the members back to the table so that we can deal with the issues we have at hand. Then we can hopefully dispense and move on to what other members have to do for the rest of the day.
Under new business, we have witnesses coming in on Bill , so we need to look at a budget, which you have in your package, that would give us an opportunity to be able to bring some witnesses in to talk to us. We've set aside some days that we've all agreed upon. I believe it's four days to hear witnesses—to hear the sponsor of the bill, and we have some provinces coming in, and then to hear people for and against the bill.
I would like you to have a look at the budget you have before you. It is something that has been put together by the clerk. What we want to move is that the budget of $23,400 to study Bill be adopted.
Is there any discussion on that? It's pretty straightforward, something that's been put together as a suggestion by the clerk. Do we have any discussion?
The question is, all in favour, then, of the budget...?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Okay. That is agreed.
Mr. Martin.
:
We're going to finish up the employability study and we're going to do Bill and Bill . That is correct. That is the order we're going to follow.
The other thing I want to suggest, not to cloud the issues here, is about the motion of Ms. Redman that came forward. Mr. Lessard proposed, because of the way the motion was written, that we deal with it in May, which we do not have in our calendar right now.
I would encourage you all to go back to your whips to deal with the fact that Mr. Lessard has made a motion that makes a lot of sense: that we have a chance to look at it in the fall, because we are jammed up.
We also have the fact that we don't want to be sitting any more than two days a week. I know that will be coming up for a vote tomorrow night.
So I would encourage you to talk to the whips. It's not that we're trying to put if off, but we have a calendar that is full right now, and unless you want to start sitting three days a week again, that is an issue.
That was a very good motion, Mr. Lessard, that you put forward.
:
I think the other suggestion is that if we don't want to add any more days, we could look at those who don't say they can come and we could slot them in on that basis.
The way it stands right now is that we'll hear from the sponsor on April 24. Once again, next Tuesday, we'll hear from the sponsor. In the afternoon, we'll hear different organizations.
On April 26, which is a week Thursday or a week tomorrow, we'll hear from the legal department and then some of the provincial governments.
On May 1 and 3, we'll hear from those who are for it and those who are against it.
It's the way the meetings have been laid out so far. There have certainly not been five who have committed, and we have invited five for each of those slots. If some people are not able to make it, maybe those who want to be added to the list could be added at that point in time.
:
Yes. We put forward a calendar for the committee a short while ago. We agreed on the calendar at that time, and we thought we could get this work done. We're looking at the summer coming at us in a fairly big hurry, and we want to get this work done.
I personally think this is sufficient time to hear from people, both for and against, and the officials and provinces. We can then move on. By then, I think we'll all know whether we support it or we don't support it, and we will move on.
By extending it, we'll get into the same rigmarole we got into with a few other pieces of business that came before this House, and it doesn't add anything. At the end, it was actually a bit of a disaster, if I remember correctly. It didn't add anything positive or constructive to the debate.
I'm happy with what we have. I'd suggest that we stick with it and try to get the work done in that time period.
:
Mr. Chairman, we cannot make the same mistake as during consideration of Bill C-257. The committee is not an open bar where anyone can come and testify. We want to grasp the two main schools of thought, and as you said earlier, achieve a balance between the two.
I agree with Mr. Savage, who is suggesting that we consider the issue on Thursday. Let us hope that we can avoid a repeat of the situation which occurred during consideration of Bill C-257. We had already heard from major national organizations, only to have partner organizations appearing before us to repeat what their national organizations had already said.
Once the committee becomes familiar with the respective opinions of the various sectors, we will already have a good grasp of the issue.
On Thursday, I would like confirmation on what had already been decided on, before inviting anyone, and it is particularly pressing because the deadline has passed. The opinion of the provinces is of the utmost importance. If a province wishes to appear but has not had the opportunity to sign up, that is something we may consider. I do not want to give preferential treatment, but rather particular consideration to the overall representations, rather than specific ones.