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National ID Cards

Do Canadians need a national identity card?

  • Yes

    Votes: 38 49.4%
  • No

    Votes: 35 45.5%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 4 5.2%

  • Total voters
    77
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redleafjumper

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Apparently there is once again a move to have Canadians obtain a national identity card.  It smacks of the same statist mindset that brought us registration of firearms.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of having such a card?  Do Canadians really want or need more ID?
 
No.  Big Brother can go suck on the end of my AR-15 before I'll allow him to police my life to a greater degree...

No surprise that the gov't tried to disarm the populace with gun control before they continued to push for this program.  Any details on this card, redleaf? Does it include fingerprints? Retina scans? DNA samples?

:threat:
 
The issue got my attention because Stockwell Day brought it up.  Here is a copy of an article on it:

National ID card back on the agenda
Canada seeks quick border access 
Dan Dugas, Canadian Press
Published: Wednesday, February 22, 2006
OTTAWA -- Sooner or later, Canadians will have to carry some form of identification other than a passport to travel outside the country, says the new federal minister of public safety.

The British Commons has just adopted legislation for a government-issued national ID card and Stockwell Day suggested in an interview with The Canadian Press that such a card is inevitable for Canada. "At this point, I don't know what it should be called, to tell you the truth," Day said.

"I don't know if we'll call it that, but we want good, law-abiding people to have smooth and quick access at all border points - not just North American, but international."

New life is being breathed into the proposal now that the United States has dropped its demand that Canadians be required to show passports to cross the border.

"We also want to be able to stop people who are a menace or a threat from getting in or getting out, so that's the overall goal," Day said.

Day said the need for identification of some sort came up again this week when he spoke on the phone with his U.S. counterpart, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherkoff.

"I think it's fair to say that in both Canada and the U.S. we do want some kind of enhanced security provision," he said.

"Whether that's some kind of a biometric approach, an enhancement on a driver's licence - all of that needs to be explored, so we do want to see enhanced technological capacity in that area."

The idea of a national ID card was raised in the months following the Sept.11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States but proposals go back even further, as a way of replacing the abused social insurance number.

The SIN was meant only for federal government documents but evolved over the years for such uses as ID for cheque-writing. Today, there are more SINs than people as government lost control over them.

Former Liberal Immigration minister Denis Coderre has always supported a card to identify Canadians, over and above the passport.

He says a plastic card could be made to contain biometric and data information that a paper passport could not.

His proposal in 2003 - which some estimates put as high as $5 billion to implement - did not get a good reception by a Commons committee looking at the idea.

Critics at the time recalled how the Liberal gun registry started out with a price tag of only $2 million and ended up costing hundreds of millions more and said the ID card was a boondoggle-in-waiting.

Coderre said this week that it's only a matter of time before other countries follow Britain and that Canada should act to ensure control over data.

" We have to have a real debate on this . . . we cannot bury our head in the sand anymore," Coderre said. "Something is going on worldwide and we have to have that debate.

"Three years ago we were in the avant-garde, but right now we're trailing."

© The Canadian Press 2006
 
In the old days, identity was not really an issue, as there was very little in the way of health or welfare the state could provide for you - that was your problem.  Now, with massive ID abuse by welfare, medicare and immigration scammers, the ID card idea has started to pick up speed.

But, what good is another card, if we will only tie ourselves in knots preventing government departments from sharing info that could catch the scammers?

Even if we went to a DNA ID process (the only reasonable one), are we capable of enacting and maintaining the regulatory structure that would use the same DNA ID for health, driving, sporting, licencing, taxation, pension and passport purposes?  With exit controls at our borders?  If we are not prepared to use the card to stop the abuse, then lets just save ourselves $5,000,000,000.

Tom
 
1) The overt* purpose of the card is to provide greater assurance that you are who you claim to be.
2) It is unlikely it will ever be foolproof against identity thieves.
3) Therefore, an identity thief will only be able to pass himself off as you with greater success.

*Nothing should pass discussion without recognition of how it might be abused in the wrong hands.  My fellow citizens, in the guise of government, do not need or deserve the capability to one day have me swipe a card everywhere I go in order to track my movements, ever.  Whether such an eventuality would necessarily transpire is irrelevant; the sufficient objection is that it would be possible.
 
OK, guys.. enough bullshit. I'm going to just start deleting posts where people can't be civil to each other....  NOTE - I'm not picking out the naughty bits, just deleting the entire post.
 
I don't like the idea of a national Id card as it really won't accomplish anything and will just cost us lots of money, just like the gun registry. It would also make the bureaucracy unbearably slow, imagine everyone in Canada all applying to the same place for their ID it would take a year or more just to get it, unless of course they are going to have provincial offices and in which case I say again whats the point then? provincial Id's are just fine and I happen to like the diffrent provinces having diffrent ones. i dunno makes it kinda unique to where you come from.
 
I don't think it's that big a deal. Most people already carry their birth certificate. That's exactly what that is, if not so high tech and simplistic, it's a national ID card. I would love one card that replaces my health card, driver's license, birth certificate, SIN card, etc. Just for the health card, put your history on it, allergies, etc. Sure would save a lot of time, wondering and testing after your found unconcious, in a strange town after getting clipped by a car.
 
Wonderful idea if properly implemented, of course those who are paranoid or have something to hide will whine and cry......
 
It is already possible to build privacy enhancing id cards that use passwords and biometrics for the purposes of id only. The card uses encrypted NFC technology to communicate with the reader. There may also be something like that very shortly which involves a three factor authentication process to access the embedded data. Who is funding the development?- the military, health insurance companies and wireless device companies. 
 
Bruce Monkhouse said:
Wonderful idea if properly implemented, of course those who are paranoid or have something to hide will whine and cry......

Don't they already whine and cry? If we listened to the paranoid and the guilty, we wouldn't have the police patrolling the streets, or laws, or any measure of protection for peace-loving, law-abiding citizens...

whiskey601 said:
It is already possible to build privacy enhancing id cards that use passwords and biometrics for the purposes of id only. The card uses encrypted NFC technology to communicate with the reader. There may also be something like that very shortly which involves a three factor authentication process to access the embedded data. Who is funding the development?- the military, health insurance companies and wireless device companies.  

How about just a biometrics system? No card, just swipe your finger/eye/foot (uh?) and voila, the right person gets the right info.
 
with respect to a "national ID card"... isn't that more or less what the US wants us and them to have to cross our big undefended border?

In the meantime we already have one... it's called a passport.
No need to get anything else IMHO
 
Quote from Geo,
In the meantime we already have one... it's called a passport.
No need to get anything else IMHO


No need?  How many of these would you like buy right now? Not much protection is it?
 
so we need a fancy dandy card AND a passport?
why don't we all get an implanted chip and do away with cards altogether?
 
geo said:
so we need a fancy dandy card AND a passport?
why don't we all get an implanted chip and do away with cards altogether?

That's a jolly good idea! I'll get right on it!
 
>Wonderful idea if properly implemented, of course those who are paranoid or have something to hide will whine and cry......

That's a common rejoinder: if you're an honest person, why do you have any reason to be apprehensive?

My response:
1) If I'm an honest person, the state doesn't need to monitor me.

2) If the state and my fellow citizens can reasonably suspect my future intentions, I can reasonably suspect the state's and my fellow citizens' future intentions.

3) The state and my fellow citizens have plenty of power already to keep me in line.  I have very little power to overcome tyranny of a majority.

4) I see no reason to further skew the imbalance, so

5) Big Brother, go pound sand down a rat hole.
 
"Quote from: geo on Yesterday at 21:58:39
so we need a fancy dandy card AND a passport?
why don't we all get an implanted chip and do away with cards altogether?"

- Ijust ate a bunch of chips.  Does that count?

(burp)

Tom
 
"with respect to a "national ID card"... isn't that more or less what the US wants us and them to have to cross our big undefended border?

In the meantime we already have one... it's called a passport.
No need to get anything else IMHO"

- Well, since we will eventually go to a DNA pasport, why not issue one to EVERYONE?

It will have your citizenship on it, so you will need it to vote (they don't check for citizenship when you vote these days) and acces health care (sorry, Montana, the frebees are over).

Tom
 
I say go for the card.. so i can get rid of all the other id that i carry. i think the goverment has alot of better things to do that continually monitor who went to a detroit strip joint last saturday night. if all the info is one one card that that will make it alot harder to rip off identities by making up numbers. and these cards are suppose to be alot cheaper to obtain that passports.

I am behind it 100%

Walrus
 
I believe TCBF is right; the Yanks are really tightening up what they'll accept as I.D. for entry so I'd imagine this national I.D. card is largely a way of keeping them happy.  I believe Canada is exempted from the requirements the U.S. is planning to impose on darn near everyone else so this may be some sort of mutually acceptable compromise.  If executed properly I'd imagine it'd be the less painful of options.  I've heard some pretty nasty stories of fake SIN cards, missing Visas, etc so maybe this idea has merit.  I'd imagine the devil in the details is coming up with a way of making sure the person applying can prove who he/she actually is. 
 
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