Canada
The use of the Social Insurance Number (SIN) as a "de facto" ID number ended in 2004 with passage of The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. There are only certain specified instances where an organization may ask for a SIN (namely for tax or retirement benefit related issues). The SIN must be guarded as confidential personal information, and therefore cannot be used as a general ID number.
Read more about this topic: National Identification Number
Famous quotes containing the word canada:
“This universal exhibition in Canada of the tools and sinews of war reminded me of the keeper of a menagerie showing his animals’ claws. It was the English leopard showing his claws.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)
“I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)