Canadian Passport - History

History

The first Canadian passports were issued in 1862, following the outbreak of the American Civil War, when the United States demanded more secure identification from Canadians wishing to cross the border. They took the form of a Letter of Request from the Governor General. These documents remained in use until, in 1915, Canadian passports were first issued in the British format, a ten section single sheet folder.

The modern form of the Canadian passport came about in 1921. At that time, Canadians were British subjects, and Canada shared a common nationality code with the United Kingdom; thus, Canadian passports were issued to those British subjects resident in or connected to Canada. This arrangement ended in 1947, when the Canadian Citizenship Act was granted Royal Assent and the designation of Canadian citizenship was created. As of July the following year, Canadian passports were issued to Canadian citizens only, and by 1985 the first machine-readable passports were distributed, in accordance with International Civil Aviation Organization standards.

In the 2008 federal budget, Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, announced that electronic passports would be introduced by 2011. Recently, the issue of electronic passport for its citizens will be pushed back to 2012 (see below for more details). A pilot project began in 2009, with e-passports being issued to special and diplomatic passport applicants.