Canada plans to implement biometric scanning -Governance Now

Canada plans to implement biometric scanning

Move to boost border security and check immigration fraud

PTI | June 7, 2011

Canada will soon roll out biometric scanning to boost border security and check immigration fraud, but it is yet to decide whether to introduce the electronic fingerprinting programme in India, official sources said on Monday.

Celyeste Power, the acting Communication Director to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, dismissed a media report that the federal government is planning to implement the first phase of the USD 200-million electronic fingerprinting programme in India because of ongoing concerns about widespread immigration fraud on applications from that country.

"The story isn't true and there has been no decision yet on which countries are going to get the biometrics," Power said in response to the story published in the Toronto Star newspaper.

"There hasn't actually been a decision yet on which countries are going to be involved in biometrics," she said.

"There are countries in discussion right now...No one's being leaned towards," the Immigration official said.

Power wouldn't say which countries are being considered for the programme, but said the ministry expects to make a decision in early fall, or sometime in 2012.

Biometric technology uses the measurement of key attributes of either the face, fingerprints or retinas to create digital identification records, but the ministry has not yet confirmed which method it will use.

The government announced in 2008 it was moving to biometrics, which is considered more reliable than the use of subjective photo identification by immigration agents, because of the digital measurements that can be read into computers using scanning technology

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