Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[Doctorfever]

Originally Posted by GGG

The complainers ruined the Carbon tax in advance. You used to get the full year of Carbon tax when you filled your taxes in March. So 9 of 12 months in advance. But because people are stupid and were claiming that they didn’t get carbon tax rebates they decided to split in into 4 payments. Those payments start in April each year so we no longer get carbon tax rebated in advance.

As to the gas bill when you buy a furnace or do windows or insulation project or make the decision to buy a heat pump the carbon tax improves the payout rate of these investments.

The important thing is that the carbon tax is reducing emissions, like it’s supposed to.

/g

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

The important thing is that the carbon tax is reducing emissions, like it’s supposed to.

/g

It probably is? Some portion of carbon related demand is elastic. If things like flights, driving, or buying a giant energy inefficient house get more expensive, people will start buying less of them.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by GGG

The complainers ruined the Carbon tax in advance. You used to get the full year of Carbon tax when you filled your taxes in March. So 9 of 12 months in advance. But because people are stupid and were claiming that they didn’t get carbon tax rebates they decided to split in into 4 payments. Those payments start in April each year so we no longer get carbon tax rebated in advance.

As to the gas bill when you buy a furnace or do windows or insulation project or make the decision to buy a heat pump the carbon tax improves the payout rate of these investments.

What a failure of communication when even someone that is generally well informed doesn’t understand we are fully rebated even with the four payments.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

A good example is the new passport redesign. $284 million. It wasn’t sole sourced, but also, I’m not sure it was needed? Why was this a priority?

That is an insane amount of money. I’m sure new passport technology and other things makes it a relatively expensive endeavour- but- $284 million?!?

Just seems like the government is extremely wasteful with money.

The Passport Office receives 400,000+ applications per month. Very busy department.

https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-...tatistics.html

Government has pocketed $1-billion since 2013 increase in passport cost
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/poli...e-in-passport/

https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/recgen...-pcrf-eng.html

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...41ceaf990.html

The redesign passport began in 2013 as a regular process to prevent counterfeiting by integrating new and more modern security features and design techniques.

Gould said that this is a “normal process” and that every 10 years the government updates the passport to ensure the technology is current.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I think his point is that it seems like a lot of money to "update the security features" on a passport.

[calgarygeologist]

Why is the government profiting from passports? Those types of services should be revenue neutral and getting a passport should not be cost prohibitive for a person or family.

[Mr.Coffee]

If the cheapest way possible to update passport security features and artwork is $284mm, we have problems.

There will be many people who frequent this thread who will jump through hoops to defend it too. This is the problem in Canada. Spending money has gotten so far out of control and so disproportionate to reason / practicality that we get what we deserve. We need to care about stuff like this.

$284 million to update security features and pictures. Holy F.

[timun]

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

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 [...]

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:

“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.

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)_/¯

[Azure]

Originally Posted by timun

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".

The problem that I have with incessant whining about people that point out government waste is an issue is that they completely refuse to acknowledge the fact that we have hundreds of millions, likely even billions being sent to government cronies.

Which is, a FACT.

And if you want to make a big long ridiculous post about how the passport enhancement costs aren't as bad as they seem, guess what? Nobody trusts this corrupt government anymore, and every single damn dollar should be accounted for, haggled over and fought over. Because they are wasting money like a bunch of drunk sailors enriching themselves and people are pretty leery of everything they do.

But hey, keep on keeping on.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by timun

$284M / 30-40M passports = $7.10-$9.46 per passport. Does that still seem totally ####ing crazy to you? If so...

Well they're not doing 40M passports, right? They're making one, and then we pay for our own after that at a rate of $120 or $160 depending on the option you select (assuming that this new design doesn't also come with an increased price).

If they were making and distributing a passport to every Canadian for that $284 million, this would be a bargain, but as far as I know they're just creating a design, with a chip in it.

[timun]

This is precisely what I'm getting at! The contract isn't just "creating a design, with a chip in it": it's manufacturing MILLIONS OF THEM. Go read the PDF I linked earlier; look at pages 49 through 52 for the mandatory requirements to meet the qualification to even bid on the contract:

(EDIT: copied the mandatory requirements here)

1. The Supplier must be the manufacturer of the Blank Travel Documents as required by Canada.
2. The Supplier must have the capability to design, develop, manufacture and assemble the ICAO compliant Canadian ePassport and other electronic and non-electronic Travel Documents.
3. The Supplier must have the capability to design, develop and implement an ICAO compliant Canadian ePassport Personalization System.
4. The Supplier must have experience in the implementation of an ICAO compliant ePassport PKI Solution.
5. The Supplier must have an existing facility or must be in the process of obtaining a facility within Canada to manufacture the ICAO compliant Canadian ePassport and other electronic and non-electronic Travel Documents as of the closing date of the ITQ.
6. The Supplier must be located in Canada or in a country which has a bilateral industrial security agreement with Canada. Currently, Canada’s Industrial Security Program has international bilateral industrial security instruments [...]
7. Canada will have two (2) central print centers with high-volume printers and several regional print sites with low-volume printers. The Supplier must be able to furnish the personalization equipment for a decentralised printing model with high-volume and low-volume solutions.
8. The Supplier must have the capacity to manufacture a high-volume of ePassport books containing laser engraveable polycarbonate data pages.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

OK, well if it includes manufacture then I completely agree, there's no reason to complain about that price.

I guess a separate debate is whether we should be paying $160 for a passport that cost under $10 to produce, but that's a different issue.

[timun]

You're not just paying $160 for a passport that costs under $10 to produce, you're paying for the administration of an entire government department to process the applications and manage the entire system.

For comparison's sake, 10-year passports cost:

• Irish are €75-€105 ($110-$153 CAD) if applied for online (more if by other means),
• UK £82.50 ($140 CAD) if applied for online (£93 [$158 CAD] if by paper form),
• New Zealand are $206 NZD ($171 CAD),
• US first-time applicants $165 USD ($222 CAD); renewals are $130 USD ($175 CAD),
• Australian are $346 AUD ($305 CAD) (!!!)

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

That's also a fair point, sure. I don't know what the administrative costs would be. I mean, processing an application probably shouldn't cost that much, one would think, but in terms of managing the entire system does it somehow directly fund border operations, passport scanners, etc? That starts making a big difference quickly.

[Azure]

Its the government. Administrative costs will be 10x more than they should be.

Plus its the Liberal government, so you have to account for the fact that they have to siphon off $250 million + and send it to their buddies.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

That's also a fair point, sure. I don't know what the administrative costs would be. I mean, processing an application probably shouldn't cost that much, one would think, but in terms of managing the entire system does it somehow directly fund border operations, passport scanners, etc? That starts making a big difference quickly.

They used to be done roughly on a cost recovery model where each passport's all-in cost (including administration) was roughly in line with the ~$80 fee they charged. But in 2013 they increased the fees significantly with the extra funds going to Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. Part of the idea of that was with 10-year passports, there would be reduced annual demand, but some fixed yearly costs would remain so they needed to increase the cost to compensate.

[Jason14h]

Why does it cost anything to “renew” a passport other than issueing the new one?

Honestly why doesn’t the government just send you a new one 3 months before expiry ? I imagine an email and / text to confirm your mailing address would be sufficient . Is it that we can’t figure out how to get a new picture updated for them that the best solution is still to walk to Walmart and get one despite the fact facial recognition tech exists and people can use their phones to upload a new picture

I guess that security is good enough to open online bank accounts , apply for loans , but not good enough to renew a passport

Anyone who thinks this couldn’t be done for a tiny percentage of the cost is out to lunch

[Jason14h]

Originally Posted by opendoor

They used to be done roughly on a cost recovery model where each passport's all-in cost (including administration) was roughly in line with the ~$80 fee they charged. But in 2013 they increased the fees significantly with the extra funds going to Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. Part of the idea of that was with 10-year passports, there would be reduced annual demand, but some fixed yearly costs would remain so they needed to increase the cost to compensate.

Gotcha so they cost more to fund more government agencies / jobs

And we just agreed a passport cost $10 to make . So the other $70 a person is administrative ??? I guess you have to send the passport which would cost a few dollars. And someone needs to take the Walmart picture and send to the manufacturer with the same info as the previous passport ! At 30$ an hr that is totally a 2 hr job PER Passport

Nice cycle they have going on !

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Jason14h

Why does it cost anything to “renew” a passport other than issueing the new one?

Honestly why doesn’t the government just send you a new one 3 months before expiry ? I imagine an email and / text to confirm your mailing address would be sufficient . Is it that we can’t figure out how to get a new picture updated for them that the best solution is still to walk to Walmart and get one despite the fact facial recognition tech exists and people can use their phones to upload a new picture

I guess that security is good enough to open online bank accounts , apply for loans , but not good enough to renew a passport

Anyone who thinks this couldn’t be done for a tiny percentage of the cost is out to lunch

I don’t disagree that their may be savings to be had but I also think you’re being a little over dramatic here. $80 to renew a document every 5 years doesn’t seem that outrageous to me. At the end of the day it probably makes sense that a passport costs more than a happy meal given what goes into it beyond just printing the document. Heck a driver’s license in Alberta costs $93 to renew and that’s all done by the private sector that’s supposedly saving us all kinds of money, with zero security checks involved.

Your idea to automatically re-issue them would probably end up costing us more since the government would be sending them to people who may not even want or need it renewed. You also don’t want more passports in circulation than necessary given the security risks, which is the same reason they need a printed image rather than one that idiots would probably photo shop if they used their phone to take it.

I get what you’re saying about opening bank accounts online but that’s also a completely different kettle of fish. One allows you to deposit, withdraw and use currency whereas the other is literally used to determine who you are, where you’re from and whether you get on an airplane or are allowed into a country. If the bank issues an account under a false name(which happens) the risk is all on them, if a country issues you a passport under a fake name there’s far greater consequences.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by timun

You're not just paying $160 for a passport that costs under $10 to produce, you're paying for the administration of an entire government department to process the applications and manage the entire system.

For comparison's sake, 10-year passports cost:

• Irish are €75-€105 ($110-$153 CAD) if applied for online (more if by other means),
• UK £82.50 ($140 CAD) if applied for online (£93 [$158 CAD] if by paper form),
• New Zealand are $206 NZD ($171 CAD),
• US first-time applicants $165 USD ($222 CAD); renewals are $130 USD ($175 CAD),
• Australian are $346 AUD ($305 CAD) (!!!)

Now do the cheap countries. I have dual citizenship and my second passport only cost the equivalent of $50CAD.