BC FIPA presented its comments before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Public Safety on the proposal to create a national identity card.
[A] national ID card would be:
- hugely expensive;
- just as subject to fraud, privacy abuses, and security breaches as current systems of identification; and
- not likely to be more effective in preventing crime than better managed and more secure systems for birth certificates, Social Insurance Numbers, passports, and driver’s licenses.
Canadians have not had an open and thorough debate about the possibility of creating a national identity card, and we believe it would be a serious mistake to proceed in the heat of the moment without such a debate — or more accurately, in the current atmosphere of fear, anger and hysteria which has so unbalanced our neighbour to the south.