Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promises to do more to fix what he calls the “unacceptable” state of the country’s passport services, which have been overloaded in recent days as thousands of Canadians struggle to obtain the necessary documents before traveling to abroad.
Speaking to CBC Radio’s The House in an interview on Saturday, Trudeau said he understood that there was a lot of concern among potential passengers at the moment.
“This situation is unacceptable,” he said. “There is real concern among families facing these things, and we need to step up.”
Pressured by host Chris Hall to say why the situation is so weak, when it was obvious to most observers that demand for passports would increase as COVID-related travel restrictions were lifted, Trudeau said the government had hired more than 600 passport workers. in January and they are ready to hire even more to help close the gap.
“There is a lot of disruption as the world returns from COVID. But that’s why we work day and night to ensure that people get their passports, “Trudeau said.
“We process tens of thousands of them every week. We make sure we deliver as quickly as possible what people need and expect from their government.”
Because processing times are slower than usual, many Canadians choose to obtain a passport or replace an expired passport by visiting one of the 35 passport offices across the country that accept applications.
WATCH Do you need a passport? Expect a long wait:
Passport seekers face a long wait due to “unprecedented” searches
Ottawa says the search for passports is “unprecedented”, with Canadians looking for new passports waiting weeks for their travel documents.
The government has launched a new online tool to tell people how long they can expect to wait to see an agent process a standard passport application or an “urgent” or “express” application for people traveling in the near future.
As of Wednesday, the waiting time has exceeded five hours in many places.
In Ottawa, the website advised applicants that they could expect to wait nearly seven hours, which means that some people in line will not be seen until the office closes at 4 p.m.
Limited opening hours and long queues have forced some passengers to camp at night to mark the time interval when these offices open at 8:30 a.m.
“Just pure anarchy”
Disappointed passengers have used Google Maps to broadcast their complaints through online passport reviews.
“It was a terrible experience! We went to apply for a passport around 7 am and the queue was already too long, “said Tagrid Chahine in a recent post about his experience with the only passport office in Ottawa.
“I felt bad for mothers who were with their children and waited for hours and then were not served!”
“Shame on every man, woman and child who created this monstrous system,” said Luke McCutchen, another traveler in the Ottawa region. “No meetings, no tickets when you line up – just pure anarchy.”
“The waiting time is ridiculous. You have to take the whole day off to line up and wait, wait and wait, “said Airean Aldrich.
“This government is a joke,” said Emma Ayetor, who said she had waited all day just to be sent away when the office closed at 4 p.m.
In Montreal on Tuesday, the situation at the Guy-Favreau complex’s passport office became so chaotic that police had to intervene to control the crowd, as well as more than 750 people lined up to be seen by an agent.
Security personnel had to intervene at the Service Canada Guy-Favreau complex in Montreal on June 21 to deal with crowds waiting to apply for or renew passports. (Ivano Demers / CBC)
“The passport office can handle it,” he said
Family Minister Karina Gould, the minister in charge of passport services, said on Wednesday that while there may be problems with some passport services, others are doing well.
“What we see in other parts of the country are, yes, queues before the passport office opens, but those queues move all day and people can be seen,” she told reporters.
“It’s a lot, but the passport office can handle it. They’re stressed, they’re tense, but they can,” she said.
Asked if the federal government had failed to travel Canadians by subjecting them to such long waits, Gould said Ottawa “predicted there would be an increase in demand,” but did not expect so many passport applications to arrive at once.
“What we didn’t expect was that all applications would come at the same time in March and April, and that so many of the applications would be new applications, not renewals,” Gould said.
She noted that 85% of applications are new and take longer to process than renewal.
Passport training can take 15 weeks
She said they were adding staff, but noted that because passport processing is a sensitive issue for security reasons, the training program for new workers could take up to 15 weeks.
In January, 1,500 employees worked on the passport program.
Since then, the government has hired 600 workers and redeployed another 600 former passport officers or other officials, and is actively recruiting another 600, according to government data provided to CBC News.
A spokesman for Gould said the department had identified 200 federal employees working for Canada’s Employment and Social Development (ESDC) who could be reassigned to help process passports, and the Canadian Revenue Agency is also determining if any of its employees can be seconded for the task.
Add Comment