The least we can say is that Service Canada’s very ordinary batting average is not improving. The government agency has already been in the hot seat this year with inexcusable postponements of up to months for some unfortunate employment insurance recipients. Mr. and Mrs. Everybody are now discovering that this apathy has spread to the passport offices, thus threatening their holidays while seriously testing their patience.
A problem of the rich, the bottleneck that paralyzes the issuance and renewal of passports from coast to coast? Necessarily. But not only, in the sense that it shines the spotlight on everything that is lacking in the single access point, and more broadly in the Trudeau government, in terms of service delivery.
Admittedly, the federal government’s delays and failures in service delivery are not exclusive to the Liberals, but their extreme reluctance to intervene with the public service is. Criticized earlier this year for shameless delays on the immigration front — the minister responsible, Sean Fraser, himself described these delays as “incredibly frustrating” — this government also seems incapable of seeing the crises coming. . Worse, even once he has both feet in it, his short sight prevents him from taking full measure of it, and therefore from intervening accordingly.
There was something painful about listening to the minister responsible for the file, Karina Gould, try to play down the crisis just two weeks ago. Ill-informed, she got confused about waiting times, even denying the existence of dubious practices that were nevertheless widely documented in the field, such as the famous secret rule that only requests filed within 48 hours, even 24 hours of departure are processed in some offices.
Pressed from all sides, Minister Gould finally admitted having had to clarify several points last week. She also announced a range of measures (including the forthcoming hiring of 600 people, extended hours of service, including weekends, and a tool to assess waiting times). Beautiful promises that officials on the floor, even with the best will in the world, still fail to materialize. Because it’s not just Canadians who are bearing the brunt of this spectacular failure, Service Canada employees are also paying the high price for this lack of vision.
On the ground, it is still resourcefulness that reigns (and a little anger, with police interventions here and there to relieve the pressure). Yet it was written in the sky that Canadians would jostle at the Service Canada gate as soon as sanitary conditions permitted. More than two years of pandemic standstill give the restlessness. We are not the only ones. The Americans, the English or the Australians are going through similar pangs, softly argued Minister Gould. With the difference that here, Service Canada has knowingly put the lid on the pot.
While they dreamed of escape wisely confined to the house, the most far-sighted who wanted to take advantage of the lull to renew their passport were rather discouraged. We have also completely ignored the fact that the first passports valid for ten years (permitted since 1er July 2013) were soon to massively come to an end. Result: from 1er April 2020 As of March 31, 2021, Canada issued only 363,000 passports, or 20% of its usual volume. Normally, Service Canada records 5,000 calls per day related to passport renewal. It now lists more than 200,000.
These figures have artificially set the stage for the rout that we know. And travelers are not at the end of their troubles. Against all logic, Ottawa has never ceased to defend tooth and nail its very imperfect ArriveCAN application, a source of much dissatisfaction among travelers who have had trouble with it. For some, failure to complete the form in time resulted in forced quarantine, even though their vaccinations were in order and their PCR test was spot on.
Willing to throw some ballast, the government announced that the requirement for travelers to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19 before boarding a plane or a train in the country would be repealed from Monday. Logic would have it that ArriveCAN, whose raison d’être is linked to the vaccination status of travellers, would go down the drain at the same time. But Ottawa maintains it, understand who can.
Clearly, this is a government more attached to dictating the standard than to putting in the work to ensure that it is respected. This goes far beyond the anecdote. Reluctant to intervene with the public service, even when it needed more assertive leadership, he cultivated a culture of non-responsibilization to which this episode, as heartbreaking as Kafkaesque, testifies.