PUBLICATION: The Edmonton Sun
DATE: 2001.12.20
SECTION: News
PAGE: 3
SOURCE: Edmonton Sun
BYLINE: Paul Cowan
Bogus Canadian <passports> have long been the travel document of choice for spies and criminals.
"A Canadian passport is the choice of the discriminating terrorist or member of the espionage community," said David Harris, a former member of CSIS who now runs Ottawa-based Insignis Strategic Research. "It gives a freedom of movement and respectability based on Canadians' international reputation. "But if we keep allowing the passport system to be so mismanaged, a Canadian passport will attract so much suspicion that its value will be nil - for the spy, for criminals and for ordinary Canadians."
Harris said the precautions taken by the government to prevent fraud were on par with most other governments. "But when you're dealing with a passport that is in high illicit demand, 'average' isn't good enough," he added.
Security consultant Alan Bell, who runs Globe Risk Holdings, said one thing the government could do immediately is check out the guarantors who countersign passport applications to say the person applying is using their real name. Earlier this year it emerged that Foreign Affairs looked into at least 2,200 passport frauds between 1998 and 2000. Many involved people trying to use altered stolen <passports>, while others used fake documentation to obtain genuine <passports>. A bogus Canadian passport sells for about $300 on the black market. In one of the most notorious cases of Canadian passport abuse, Israeli assassins were caught carrying bogus Canuck papers in 1997. A 1994 raid on a Cuban man's apartment in Montreal uncovered 40 blank Canadian <passports>.