A new passport office was opened Monday in Pointe-Claire, in the west of Montreal. Ottawa hopes to expand the offer in the metropolis, at a time when the accessibility crisis that has generated long queues is gradually being reduced.
Posted at 3:52 p.m.
“We are currently trying to reduce the backlog and bring service standards back to normal, and we are taking all the necessary measures to improve the experience of Canadians and make our services more accessible,” explained the Minister of Health on Monday. Family, Children and Social Development, Karina Gould, confirming this new opening.
A total of five new offices have been opened to “improve the experience” of people during the passport application process. In addition to Pointe-Claire, Service Canada will now have a presence in Brampton and Whitby, Ontario. A new branch will also open in Calgary Sundance, Alberta, as well as in Richmond, British Columbia.
The authorities estimate that these new offices will “reduce the queues of other offices located in the largest cities”.
In Greater Montreal, three other offices were already available to collect his Canadian passport. The busiest, the downtown one at the Guy-Favreau complex, has been literally stormed in recent weeks, and several citizens have been forced to return empty-handed.
Any solutions in sight?
For the future, Ottawa says it is “examining new solutions to improve services and implement them, in particular new technologies to better inform Canadians about the status of their request”. “I hope to be able to communicate more details about these improvements shortly,” Minister Gould said in a statement.
A sign that the “passport crisis” is not yet completely over, Service Canada claims to have issued nearly 48,500 passports across the country in the week of July 11 to 17, the latest data available. Since 1er last April, this figure was close to 605,500.
No less than 7,076 overtime hours were also worked by the federal agency’s staff during this period, and the average waiting time in call centers was 56 minutes.
End of June, The Press reported that the new “Task Force to Improve Government Services” has already got to work. “We will find solutions as soon as possible,” said Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller, who co-chairs this new working group announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in an interview. However, he did not want to set a deadline. “We don’t want it to take all summer to unclog something that should never have happened,” he explained in passing.
It should be noted that the Conservative Party of Canada, the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party have all raised doubts about this large committee which brings together 13 ministers, or one third of the cabinet. Other solutions are being considered, such as “increased investment” and the computerization of services still on paper.