I won't be long, as many of my thoughts and comments have been covered by others.
I just want to zero in on the importance of this problem you have identified with SIN numbers. It's spelled out very clearly in your report under “Why it's important”. You have repeated that same paragraph twice in that section of the report, which I think is appropriate, because you point out that:
—the SIN was used in issuing about $12.5 billion in Employment Insurance benefits, about $53.8 billion in Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan benefits, and more than $1.3 billion in Canada Student Loans. By law, anyone submitting income tax information to the Canada Revenue Agency must also use the SIN.
When you have enormous quantities of SIN numbers in excess of the known population, how big is the risk of fraud in the programs that I just mentioned and others?