Passport crisis | Trudeau’s office flooded with complaints as early as March

(Ottawa ) Not knowing where to turn to obtain their passports or immigration documents for loved ones who wish to come to Canada, many Canadians have written to the Prime Minister’s Office to intervene on their behalf in order to get the precious documents after months of waiting.

Joel-Denis Bellavance
The Press

But the response from the Prime Minister’s Office was consistently the same at the height of the passport crisis and the mess at the Immigration Department this summer: it sent people on the brink of despair back to Service Canada or Immigration and Citizenship, where they had already encountered long delays.

The Press obtained some 350 pages of emails sent to the Prime Minister’s Office about this under the Access to Information Act.

Disarray

These documents illustrate the distress of many citizens in the face of the considerable delays to which they had to resign themselves before obtaining a passport or other essential services. They also show that the first signs of the coming crisis appeared at the beginning of March, the month from which the emails multiplied in the office of the Prime Minister.

“I’ve been waiting for my passport for three months and I haven’t heard from anyone. Don’t you think my opinion counts? How long can it take to get an answer? Guess I’ll have to wait until my passport expires,” an Ontario resident said on March 20.

“I am writing to you regarding my son’s passport. It has been six MONTHS since I submitted a renewal application and Service Canada keeps delaying my application for no reason and no explanation. I have been calling Service Canada every week for a month. I have been going to the Service Canada office for two weeks and NOTHING. We have to go to the United States within three weeks for a family emergency, ”pleads an Alberta resident in an email on March 16.

Exasperated, another individual called for the prime minister’s personal number to explain to him in person the unacceptable situation he had been dealing with for months. “Each year that the pandemic lasts should be added to the expiry date of the passport,” railed an Ontario resident.

“I recognize the reason why you wrote to the Prime Minister asking for his help. However, I hope that you will understand that he is unable to intervene personally in this file, ”answers an employee of the Prime Minister’s Office to another correspondent. He then invites the person to contact the office of the Minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser.

“I’m glad you’re passing on my concerns to the ministry that’s responsible for this mess. It will be an election issue for me and many others who have been affected by it,” said another Ontario resident.

Creation of a working group

Images showing long lines of people waiting outside Passport Canada offices made headlines over the summer. The crisis was such that the Prime Minister created a ministerial task force.

On Monday, this working group took stock of the situation in passport offices, airports and Immigration and Citizenship offices.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller, who is co-chair of the task force, said the situation has improved with the hiring of new employees, the use of better technologies and the addition service points. But he added: “We are not out of the woods yet. There is still a lot of work to do. In some cases, we have returned to pre-pandemic service standards. But our work is not finished. »

On Wednesday, Trudeau was asked by reporters why he didn’t see fit to take advantage of his cabinet reshuffle to announce changes to departments that ran into serious problems this summer. He replied that the government was re-elected barely a year ago and that the challenges have multiplied in recent months. “We recognize that there are enormous challenges in the world and in Canada as well. But we are here to work and to make the necessary improvements,” he said.

With the collaboration of William Leclerc