I hear a lot about what you might call the passport crisis. But one thing seems to be flying under the radar: the fact that with current government requirements, the cost of this valuable document has nearly doubled. In short, the government is profiting from the present situation.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
My daughter, like many young adults, has suffered greatly from the pandemic. With her boyfriend, she plans to leave for a simple trip and with her savings for the year between the end of the school year and the start of summer work. At the beginning of April, she went to a regional passport office in the greater Montreal area to obtain her first “adult” passport. She is told that she needs to make an appointment and that way she will get her passport in time for the planned trip. She makes one of the only appointments still available. However, when she showed up for this appointment at the beginning of June, they refused to take her request since “the instructions have changed and we only take people who travel within 48 hours” or those for a passport. delivered at the end of August. However, his trip is scheduled for the following week.
She is told that she will have to show up 48 hours before her departure, line up and hope… No exceptions for planners who have made their appointments for weeks. We didn’t see fit to contact them either.
She therefore stood in line last week, like thousands of other people, 48 hours before her departure and considers herself lucky since she waited “only” 18 hours to be able to submit her application (and return to pick up his passport the next day, the day before he left). She notes that not everyone who arrived after 5 a.m. would have been so lucky. They will be sent home around 2 p.m., after long hours of waiting, no one having seen fit to inform them beforehand. She also avoided the absurd situation of police intervention…
$110 more
But, beyond the expectation, one thing particularly angered her: the cost of the precious document, the $270 paid to obtain it. Normally, a 10-year adult passport costs $160. An emergency passport costs $270. However, when we ask people, as Minister Gould was doing again today, who do not travel within 48 hours not to show up before that time and when we even refuse to serve them otherwise, it is This is a direct way for the government to increase the cost of passports, since $270 will be charged for the “urgent” issuance of the latter. At least that’s the amount they demanded of my daughter.
Despite the current chaos due to the government’s negligence, the latter has not abolished the additional $110 fee for passports issued other than through the “regular” channel (or at least had not done so as of June 14). Disturbingly, this current chaos is serving government coffers well.
The instruction to show up only within 48 hours of a departure already causes enough stress and even anxiety, lost working days, fatigue and bad weather, it seems to me.