Parents of babies born in Ontario will be able to register births online, apply for a birth certificate and ask for a Social Insurance number all at once, come fall — thanks to a new electronic service delivery project.
Service Canada is working with Ontario’s Ministry of Consumer and Business Services to update the birth and death registration process, in a model the federal government hopes other jurisdictions will also adopt.
Registering births, deaths and marriages is one of a government’s oldest functions, as Richard Steele, the director of registration modernization for the Ministry, told a session at this year’s Lac Carling Congress.
“The slightly scary thing is the process for doing it hasn’t changed in about 130 years,” Steele said.
The current registration process is paper-based, involves almost every stakeholder possible in the public sector, and is far more complex than it needs to be, said Steele and Andr