The problem I have with incessant whining about government spending is that it's almost always without any context whatsoever, other than "it seems like a lot".
So this $284M contract for the new passports, let's talk about it. I'll ask you three questions:
1) Where did you hear about it?
2) What does the contract actually cover?
3) If this contract is unreasonably expensive, what
should it cost?
Here are my guesses at those answers:
1) Where did you hear about it?
97% chance it was from this:
https://www.westernstandard.news/new...14ad41347.html
Quote:
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Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill) found out through Order Paper Questions the Trudeau government spent $300 million on the new Canadian passport design [...]
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As though this was secret knowledge buried by the Liberal government. It was a competitive public tender, the results of which were known
five years ago. Anyone who wanted to know about could have looked it up on buyandsell.gc.ca. The only reason Rempel Garner even asked about it in the first place was media reports that the ends of the new passport book covers would curl in high humidity:
Quote:
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“Weeks after Canada’s new passport was discovered to be, putting it mildly, less than durable, a response to an Order Paper Question I received moments ago shows that the Liberal government spent nearly $300M on its design and printing,” said Rempel.
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The amount spent on the program
didn't bother her in the slightest for the previous four years. It's political grandstanding, nothing more.
2) What does the contract actually cover?
You think it's just "new artwork and updated security features". The contract 'components' from the government (refer to the Invitation to Qualify for the contract
here; see p. 6) were:
- Passport books incorporating an ePassport chip (i.e. contactless integrated circuit);
- Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) environment (Certificate Authority, Document Signer, Certificate Revocation Lists, Master List signers, Active Authentication key pairs, other sub-Certificate Authorities and signers as required (e.g. visa signers), Links to International Civil Aviation Organization Public Key Directory (ICAO PKD));
- Supplemental Access Control (SAC) and Logical Data Structure (LDS) v1.8;
- Personalization of passport books by laser-engraving a polycarbonate data page where the ePassport chip is integrated inside the data page;
- Encoding solution;
- Interfaces between the different components of the solution;
- Quality assurance and quality control equipment and/or services for personalized books;
- Maintenance and Support Plan; and
- Passport book design.
The book design itself was but one small part of a greater overarching passport program. The contract is until the end of the 2025-26 fiscal year (see
here, under "contract duration") with options to extend it to 2033, and it includes not only designing the new passports, but manufacturing them too (see p. 49 of the PDF I linked previously) and deploying new printers across the country to do so.
In the ITQ doc (pp. 32-33) they gave historical passport production volumes of about 4.9 million passports per year from 2012 to 2017, a forecast ~20 million passports from 2017 to 2024, and anticipated future production of 5.5 million per year thereafter.
So, roughly speaking, the contract is for the complete redesign of an entirely new generation of electronic passport with custom engraved polycarbonate security features and a microchip compatible with the latest international standards, and the production of 30 to 40 million of said passports over ten years. The proponent has to do all this out of a facility that meets "secret" security standards.
$284M / 30-40M passports = $7.10-$9.46 per passport. Does that still seem totally ####ing crazy to you? If so...
3) If this contract is unreasonably expensive, what should it cost?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯