PUBLICATION:  Toronto Star
DATE:  2003.10.07
SECTION:  NEWS
PAGE:  A06
SOURCE:  Toronto Star
BYLINE:  Bruce Campion-Smith
DATELINE:  OTTAWA

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ID cards seen as 'a slippery slope'; National plan would be expensive,
ineffective, report warns Commons committee to offer long list of
privacy concerns
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A national ID card, touted by Immigration Minister Denis Coderre, would
be horrendously expensive, do little to enhance national security and
could mark a troubling invasion of privacy that many Canadians will not
accept, a Commons committee report will warn today.

After a year of study and consultations, the Commons committee on
citizenship and immigration has found little support or compelling
evidence to show why such a card is necessary.

The committee's interim report to be released today contains no
recommendations. But it highlights a long list of concerns that stand as
daunting hurdles to Coderre's ambitions to introduce national identity
cards encoded with biometrics, personal features such as iris scans or
fingerprints.

The committee held hearings across the country and says the majority of
witnesses it heard from were "adamantly opposed" to any sort of national
identity card.

"The committee was warned many times about the prospect of the police
being able to stop people on the street and demand proof of their
identity," the report says.

"It was suggested that the introduction of a national identity card
would be a slippery slope leading to greater intrusions on our private
lives," it notes.

There were worries that the databases containing the ID card files could
be "hacked" or used improperly by bureaucrats running the system.

Indeed, the committee report raised the prospect that use of the card
could leave a digital record in a central database recording the details
of a person's daily life.

The committee also raises questions about the cost of implementing the
card, which it says could top $5 billion.

Many witnesses told the committee that kind of money could be better
spent boosting security at the borders, on law enforcement and enhancing
the security features of existing documents, such as birth certificates
and passports.

Yet despite the high cost, the report warns that biometrics aren't
foolproof.

"That means that legitimate national identity card holders could be
subject to suspicion and accusations when the technology fails," it
says.

NDP MP Pat Martin, a member of the immigration committee, called it a
"boondoggle" in the making.

"The minister is hell-bent and determined to rush ahead with this in
spite of overwhelming arguments to the contrary by virtually every
sector of society," Martin (Winnipeg Centre) said in an interview.

He said the cost of a national ID would make the cost overruns of the
gun registry look like a "good deal."

The report's release this morning coincides with the start of a two-day
conference organized by the immigration and citizenship department on
biometrics.

Coderre defended the conference, saying it's important Canada have a
debate on the role of biometrics in passports and ID cards, especially
as other countries are looking at the technology as well. But critics
accused the department of stacking the forum with boosters of
biometrics, starting with tonight's keynote speaker, prominent American
lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who became a proponent of biometrics following
the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He's being paid $20,000 U.S. to attend the
conference.

"Alan Dershowitz is the only guy in North America except for the
minister himself who thinks this is a good idea," Martin said.

He asked why Ontario's information and privacy commissioner Ann
Cavoukian, a prominent critic of the proposed ID card, was shut out of
the conference while representatives from the biometrics industry were
allowed in.