Passport crisis | Up to half as many employees in 2022

Ottawa has significantly reduced the number of staff assigned to processing passport applications between 2018 and 2021. Result: they were almost half as many at the start of 2022 to respond to the many requests from Canadians wishing to travel after the lifting of the main restrictions measures for passports. trips abroad.

According to data obtained by The Press under the Access to Information Act at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 1,512 officials were responsible for responding to passport applications at the beginning of 2018. There were only 893 in 2021, a number that rose to 1,161 during the year. ‘Next year.

This substantial drop in staff has considerably affected Passport Canada’s ability to process the flood of applications during the summer of 2022, says Yvon Barrière, Regional Executive Vice-President Quebec at the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC ). “We had between 40 and 50% less staff,” he says.

Where did all these employees go? Huge numbers were assigned to other services at the height of the pandemic, when restrictive measures severely limited overseas travel. Many Passport Canada officials worked in particular on processing applications for Canadian emergency benefits (CERB) at a time when COVID-19 forced the shutdown of many sectors of economic activity.

A year and a half late

But according to Mr. Barrière, the reduction in staff is not the only cause of the passport crisis which made headlines during the summer of 2022. A significant delay in the processing of applications at the height of the pandemic has also aggravated the situation.

“Passport applications, while people can’t travel, they can wait. Leave them aside, said the managers,” says Mr. Barrière, who estimates that we have thus accumulated up to a year and a half of delay in the processing of requests.

“All the ingredients were there for what we knew [à l’été 2022] “, he argues. At a time when there were no more restrictions on traveling abroad, employees therefore found themselves dealing with a considerable increase in requests for new passports or renewals. All this with a significant cumulative delay in the two previous years.

“They did not see the crisis coming,” argues Yvon Barrière. However, he believes that this was perfectly foreseeable. “If the managers had planned for it, we wouldn’t have had the queues we have known,” he says.

When Ottawa began to hire staff in the face of the flood of requests, the situation did not necessarily improve, at least not in the short term. “Employees had to be trained and often we hired the best to train them. They didn’t have time to process the applications. »

The union representative also rejects the argument that the large number of employees working from home over the past three years could have slowed down the processing of passport applications.

According to data obtained by The Pressat least 80% of staff processing passport applications worked remotely in 2020, 2021 and 2022. “People have quotas, they have to process a certain number of applications every day, whether they are at home or at office”, explains Yvon Barrière.

“They had their lesson”

The majority of employees loaned to other services have been repatriated, he believes, judging that the backlog in processing applications has been made up.

“They had their lesson. They are taking back control. We should not experience a new crisis, ”he concludes.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not respond to questions from The Press, inviting us to write to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). In response to our email, ESDC indicated that it was unable to answer our questions on Friday.

With the collaboration of William Leclerc, The Press