Ontario unveiled new, more secure driver's licences Friday to help prevent identity theft and to serve as the basis for a possible passport alternative for crossing the United States border.
  
Transportation Minister Jim Bradley unveiled the new licences, which include at least six new security features and will be given to every driver in the province when they renew their licence.

Staff Insp. Steven Harris of the Toronto Police Service told the news conference in Toronto he is impressed with the new document and predicted it will be harder for fraud artists to copy.

The new licences, he said, will keep drivers one step ahead of fraud artists and identity thieves.

The new licence will also be the basis for a passport alternative.
  
Bradley has been working for years to convince the U.S. not to force Canadians and Americans to have passports to cross the international border, which he worries will seriously curtail tourism into Ontario, especially spur-of-the-moment visits and day trips by Americans.
  
The province will first have to strike a deal with the federal government to access citizenship data, which then could be added to the new driver's licences on a voluntary basis and then be used instead of a passport to enter the United States.

The minister said he still has to get final agreement from the federal government, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the privacy commissioners in Ottawa and Queen's Park before those passport alternative licences can be issued.
  
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff confirmed last month that enhanced driver's licences will be accepted as alternatives to passports at the Canada-U.S. border.
  
New security measures under the so-called Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative are supposed to take effect at land and sea crossings between Canada and the U.S. starting next summer.
  
Those new measures were originally confined to passports, but Homeland Security officials have become increasingly comfortable with high-tech driver's licences that contain proof of citizenship.
  
Currently, Canadians only need a passport to enter the U.S. by air.
  
Canada has been pushing for the alternative documents, saying passports are expensive and harder to get than a driver's licence, while several states and provinces are interested in improving their licences because most people need them anyway.
  
The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was passed by the U.S. Congress in 2004 in a bid to plug security holes after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
  
The new rules were supposed to go into effect in January, but last June, U.S. officials issued a reprieve on passports for people entering at land and sea points until at least the following summer.