Canadian Man Uses iPad As Passport At US Border

By Guardian on January 4, 2012

   

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This article titled “Canadian man passes US border using his iPad” was written by Ben Quinn, for The Guardian on Wednesday 4th January 2012 01.12 UTC

A Canadian man who realised that he had left his passport at home as he approached the US border managed to cross over by using his Apple iPad.

In a novel deployment of the tablet that may have come as a surprise even to the late Steve Jobs, Martin Reisch said that a mildly annoyed US border officer made an exception after he was handed the iPad displaying a scanned copy of the forgotten passport.

Reisch was a half hour from the border between the US and the Canadian province of Quebec when he decided to try to gain entry rather than turn back and make a two-hour trek back home to Montreal to fetch his passport.

He told the officer he was heading to the US to drop off Christmas gifts for his friend’s kids. He said that the true story, the scanned passport and his driver’s license helped him get through last week.

“I thought I’d at least give it a try,” said Reisch, according to reports by the Associated Press.

“He took the iPad into the little border hut. He was in there a good five, six minutes. It seemed like an eternity. When he came back he took a good long pause before wishing me a Merry Christmas.”

US Customs and Border Protection says it only accepts a passport, an enhanced driver’s license or a Nexus pass from Canadian citizens entering at land crossings. The list doesn’t mention facsimiles, like scans and photocopies.

Reisch, 33, said he took a scanned photo of his passport years ago in case it was ever lost or stolen while travelling. He said he also successfully used the passport on his iPad to get through Canadian Customs on the way home later that day.

However, the 33-year-old said he doubted that he would get away with it again and would take his passport next time, although he hopes border officials will eventually make digital identification an official form of travel document.

“I see the future as 100% being able to cross with your identity on a digital device it’s just a matter of time,” he said.

via PSFK: http://www.psfk.com/2012/01/man-passport-ipad.html#ixzz1iYubZKv4

Quebec workplaces least diverse in Canada: study

According to reports in Postmedia newspapers on a study completed by the Association for Canadian Studies(ACS), while Canada as a whole has multicultural workplaces, Quebec had the lowest proportion out of all the provinces.

The National Post reports:

“Seventy-three per cent of Canadians describe their workplace or school as diverse... Sixty per cent of Quebecers work in a multicultural environment, the lowest proportion of any province... Fewer Quebecers work and study in multicultural environments because most of the province's immigrants are concentrated in Montreal, and because the city attracts fewer immigrants than Toronto or Vancouver, (ACS executive director Jack) Jedwab said. Also, Quebec has a lower proportion of cultural minorities in government jobs than other provinces.”

Despite the lack of cultural diversity in the workplace, the Montreal Gazette notes that population numbers from the provincial government’s Institut de la statistique du Québec show “diversity is increasingly becoming the hallmark of 21st-century Quebec.”According to the National Post, Léger Marketing "surveyed 2,345 people online in September and October for the Canadian portion of the poll. The sample size would yield a margin of error of two percentage points, 19 times out of 20." Leger Marketing told OpenFile Montreal that a total of 484 people from Quebec were polled for the study but declined to share the full report with OpenFile, saying it would be made public in the coming weeks.

Population growth in the province is now propelled by immigration and not the birth rate, the Gazette reported. With this trend, diversification in the workplace is bound to increase.

Chart Source: Léger Marketing, ORC International via Association for Canadian studies.