Most Canadian residents do not have to present identification (ID) documents on a daily basis to navigate their basic needs. Yet the same racism and inequality that operates in all other realms is at play here and targeted groups and individuals have to prove their identity more often than others. Employers, landlords, financial institutions, police, border officials and others all impose their identification requirements differentially.

It is also not so onerous for most of us to hold onto our ID – you put your wallet or purse down in the same place every night and assume it will be there when you awake. Or you leave your passport, social insurance number card or health card in a dresser drawer until the rare occasion you need to carry it with you. Without the luxury of a stable, secure place to house their possessions, homeless people are at a dramatically increased risk of having their ID damaged, stolen or confiscated by abusive partners, police officers or slumlords. Yet homeless people are required to show their ID almost daily just for basic survival. Identification documents are required to access the most basic support systems and the income support lifelines that keep many individuals and families from total destitution all require between one and three ID documents to access.

It was not always this way. The ID requirements of social programs and government services have skyrocketed in the last few years, while legitimate access to these required documents has been dramatically restricted to only the best-resourced and least in-need members of our communities. Essentially, the only people who can access replacement identification documents these days are those who would keep them in a dresser drawer anyway. This increasing polarity is a direct or indirect result of various government strategies designed specifically to keep people “out”. The same result has been achieved through several different methods.

Institutional Denial by Process

A campaign promise of the Mike Harris government in Ontario was a reduction in the province’s “welfare roll”. Apart from massive cuts to welfare rates, and forcing people to work for their social assistance through the Ontario Works (OW) welfare program, a third strategy emerged to fulfill this promise. Identification requirements for welfare were tightened, and regular “verifications” or spot checks were implemented under this regime. As a result, Ontario Works staff were forced to turn away individuals who were clearly in need of support and were eligible for social assistance, but who did not have their basic ID and so could not prove their identity and legal status in the country.

Additionally, the centralized OW pre-recorded voice message system states that OW applicants will need to bring their ID with them to their first meeting with a social worker, suggesting that those without ID need not bother to apply. What the message does not state is that OW is obligated to assist applicants to apply for the very identification they are required to provide. Most people are turned away by the voice message system and never make it to their first meeting. For those who do access an emergency cheque, the ID requirements are still impossible – the cost of applying for the required documents would consume much of the welfare cheque, leaving little left over for food, shelter, transportation or other basic needs. The choice is clear for most people. After two months of emergency cheques, these applicants are ultimately turned away because they still cannot prove their identity.

Similarly, a verification system was implemented that requires individuals receiving social assistance to present their original ID documents at regular intervals and/or whenever they are asked. If the ID is not available at verification time, the individual may be given up to three months to acquire and present the required documents. The same impossible choice exists – the cost of replacing the ID is prohibitive in the forced poverty of welfare. And considering an OW applicant has to prove identity and legal status at the time of application, what possible role can this verification process have? A grave outcome is that individuals and families on OW end up having their social assistance cut off because they cannot present their ID on demand.

This is an example of institutional denial by process, whereby barriers are built into the system to deter and deny even those individuals who are eligible for and actively seeking services. By ensuring that a certain percentage of legitimate applicants will never be able to satisfy one criterion, and that others who have somehow managed to meet it at one point will fail at some point down the road, policy makers managed to fulfill the campaign promise of reducing Ontario’s welfare roll.

Targeted Funding Restrictions

Years of such government cost-saving strategies coupled with overt funding cuts to essential services by all levels of government have left throngs of people with escalating un-met needs and diminishing supports. With so much belt-tightening imposed by government funders, non-government social service agencies and other institutions have had to develop methods to allocate their insufficient resources in the face of overwhelming need. In attempts to rationalize the difficult choices they have to make in an increasingly irrational funding system, many agencies have turned to government-issued identification documents as a tool for prioritizing eligibility for services.

Foodbanks across Toronto, for example, now require individuals to present ID to access services. Dwindling resources and increasing demands mean food support services have had to find ways to keep their distribution systems “fair”. As a result, clients of most foodbanks are now only eligible for support within their own geographic area, and can only receive food baskets one time per month. Rather than inventing a new method to monitor service use and improve fairness within the system, most foodbanks use government-issued ID as their tool of choice to gauge eligibility against these criteria. By using ID in this way, under-resourced agencies restrict access to their services in attempts to maintain semi-balanced budgets.

Similar systems are developing in public schools where a crisis in education funding also prompts school administrators to use ID as a screening tool. This frequently results in immigrant parents or people of colour being forced to prove their own status in Canada before they can enroll children in school since some school administrators are hesitant to give classroom space to a child who may be removed during the school year as a result of a lost immigration or refugee hearing. The result is that already marginalized people are kept out of public education through differential ID requirements.

Increasing Security Measures

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, all levels of Canadian governments have responded by altering identification issuing systems in the name of heightened security. For example, the process for applying for and issuing an Ontario birth certificate has undergone over 100 different changes since 9/11, and in 2002 this document was touted in a provincial government campaign as the most difficult to access ID document in North America. Incidentally, this public awareness campaign was called “Your Identification is Your Freedom”.

The introduction of extensive application questions, a guarantor’s signature requirement, and an application fee that doubled overnight made the Ontario birth certificate impossible for homeless, poor, and marginalized people to obtain. In recognizing that these measures denied legitimate access to this essential document to significant sectors of the population, the issuing office has since distinguished itself by collaborating with community agencies to develop and implement protocols that reduce systemic barriers for homeless and low-income applicants.

However these security measures were only the beginning and, regretfully, the Ontario birth certificate has been eclipsed as the most difficult to access document on the continent. That status can now be conferred with some certainty on Citizenship and Immigration’s newest document, the Permanent Resident card, which is required of all landed immigrants who want to travel outside of Canada. This document is so “secure” that applying for one involves an elaborate combination of questionnaires, original passports, visas, and other background ID, guarantors, lawyers, sworn affidavits, photos, financial institutions, application fees, months of waiting and visits to an Immigration office near you.

Again, this new uber-secure document is probably only a stepping-stone. On the federal government’s not-so-back burner is the introduction of a mandatory “National Identity Card” which would be required of every person in Canada. The proposed card would contain biometric information such as fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition technology. Feasibility studies have already been conducted, and biometric technology is already in the short-term plans for Canadian passports and Ontario driver’s licenses. And Canada would not be the first country to implement this new generation ID card – Britain, for example, started issuing their own version just last month.