Canada looks to catch up by issuing electronic passports in 2012

OTTAWA — Canada has begun the process of procuring millions of electronic passports and plans to start issuing them in 2012.

Public Works and Government Services Canada invited potential suppliers to submit letters of interests this summer.

It expects to notify qualifying firms within the next couple of weeks and tender for bids by late fall, a departmental spokesman said.

Interest in the lucrative ePassport contract has been lively. Nearly three dozen firms asked for documents as part of the solicitation of interest and qualifications process.

They include Ottawa-based Canadian Bank Note Company, Canada Post, Bell Canada, 3M Canada, Accenture, Dell Canada, Entrust, IBM Canada, Microsoft Canada, Telus Communications and Toshiba International Corp.

Canada’s ePassport will contain a “proximity contactless chip” that can only be read if it’s held within 10 centimetres of a reader and the machine-readable zone on page two has been scanned first.

The chip will have the holder’s name, sex and date and place of birth, along with a digital photo of the bearer’s face.

To verify your identity, customs officials will match the information on the chip with the printed information and picture in the passport.

A June report by Acuity Market Intelligence predicted that by 2014, Canada will be the world’s ninth-largest issuer of ePassports, behind India, the United States, China, Brazil, Britain, the Philippines, Japan and France.

By that same year, the top-10 ePassport countries will be spending $2.7 billion to purchase 77 million documents annually, says the Acuity report. Between them, they’ll account for 59 per cent of the ePassport market.

At least 90 countries will be offering ePassports by the end of this year, including almost all European nations. That will grow to 104 countries by 2014, says the Acuity report.

Gemalto, a Netherlands-based global firm with $2.7 billion in sales last year, will bid on the Canadian contract. It already supplies ePassports to 16 countries, including the United States, France and Italy, and just landed a contract to do the same for Morocco.

Neville Pattinson, Gemalto’s vice-president of government affairs, said Canada has indicated it wants about two million ePassports in the first year, then four or five million a year for the next five.

Canada appears to be looking for a company that can provide finished personalized books, he said.

“So it appears not to be just a request for a book. It seems to be more of an issuance capability as well,” Pattinson said. “But it’s not entirely defined yet.”

Some ePassports include additional biometric information, such as fingerprints or iris scans, which could raise privacy concerns.

But Passport Canada says the only biometric information on Canada’s ePassport will be a photo of the holder’s face. Everything else on the chip will be identical to the information visible to the naked eye on page two of printed passports.

The risk that hackers will be able to “skim” personal details from ePassports has receded as governments have beefed up security measures.

“There are no concerns, in my view, of skimming if it’s done correctly,” said Pattinson, who advised the U.S. State Department on how to protect personal information on ePassports.

While there were reports a few years ago of some ePassports being compromised or badly configured, “none of ours have been subject to any questions to date,” Pattinson said.

Passport Canada originally planned to introduce electronic passports next year, but that’s been pushed back to 2012, said a spokeswoman.

The agency is now in the process of determining what it will charge for ePassports and how long they’ll remain valid. An adult passport now costs $87 and is valid for five years.

Those fees will likely rise for ePassports, and validity could be extended to as much as 10 years.

After publishing the proposed changes and gathering more public feedback, Passport Canada will finalize the fee proposal and table it in Parliament before implementation.