As the summer holidays approach, Ottawa is already struggling to meet the growing demand for passports in Ontario. Waiting times are getting longer, and appointments are becoming rare, even though the federal government expects to receive up to 60% more requests than during the 2022 crisis, we learned. The duty.
In Ottawa and Toronto, you have to wait almost four hours to submit an application. Quebec seems for the moment to escape such traffic: in Montreal, waiting times are estimated at 1 hour 15 minutes; in Gatineau, at 1:30 a.m. However, it is impossible to make an appointment before mid-May, or even June, in most offices in the province.
“Currently, as the summer holidays approach, we are in a peak period, and it is usual and normal to see waiting times increase in passport offices,” explains Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), which does not indicate that he sees the beginnings of a new passport crisis. In 2022, many travelers had to queue day and night to try to obtain, sometimes in vain, the precious document before their departure.
Ottawa, however, expects to receive up to 5.4 million applications in 2024-2025, or nearly two million more than in 2022-2023, according to figures obtained by The duty. An increase which takes into account the expiration of the first 10-year passports, issued in 2014, and which “will be eligible for renewal in July,” writes Mila Roy, communications advisor at EDSC.
She assures that “Service Canada has the necessary operational staff” and that, “if demand exceeds forecasts, […] existing or additional resources” may be temporarily directed “where support is needed during their shift or overtime.”
ESDC recommends that travelers “renew their passport as soon as possible,” stating that the “service standard is 20 business days.” “It is neither necessary nor advantageous to arrive before the office opens. »
Take his troubles patiently
In Ottawa, the waiting time is estimated by Service Canada at 2 hours 45 minutes. But on the ground, some people tell the Duty having spent much more time there. “You have to be patient,” said one of them, who preferred not to give her name. After waiting in vain for 2 hours on Tuesday, she returned Wednesday morning to the office located in the Ottawa district of Orléans 90 minutes before it opened. She left him 5.5 hours later, after 4 hours spent inside the premises.
When passing the Duty, that same day, around fifteen people were waiting in front of the office door and were afraid of not being able to be served during the day. Did they expect less waiting two years after the passport crisis? “Yes, and we don’t understand,” Valerie said.
“Every time I’ve been to a passport office for the last five years, it’s been a nightmare,” says Brittany Wynne Jones, who came to collect her child’s travel document. Ordered two weeks ago, it’s still “not ready, even though it was supposed to be” an hour and a half earlier.
Across the sidewalk, Pamela MacKinnon, who was given a numbered ticket, is happy to be able to go home rather than having to wait there. Housed in the same boat, a couple was however only served 45 minutes after the meeting time set by the office.
Not always service in French
While waiting times are around 2.5 hours in Toronto, French speakers who wish to be served in their language must also travel around twenty kilometers, since the only passport office in the center of the Queen City does not offer services in French.
“It is inconceivable that the federal government still cannot provide services in a reasonable time at its passport offices. Nothing has been learned from the crisis of summer 2022,” wrote Duty Bloc MP Louise Chabot, who judges that “ensuring service on time and in French” is the “bare minimum”.
For its part, ESDC explains that “the availability of service in official languages is determined by the Treasury Board based on the census by applying the Official Languages Act”, and that “interpretation services by telephone” remain available in unilingual offices.
This report is supported by the Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the Government of Canada.