The minister responsible for managing the huge passport processing delays, Karina Gould, specifies that the employees lending a hand to Service Canada and coming from other departments are not the ones who will carry out the verifications normally done by agents who have received 15 weeks of training.
The idea is that these people called in reinforcement can be on the job after a much shorter training, according to what she argued Wednesday in a press scrum.
“We are in the process of having other strategies to do training for the other elements of passport processing to ensure that these people could work on other stages in the process in order to do this, precisely, more efficiently,” said M.me Gould.
Asked to specify how much learning time is to be expected, the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development replied that it will vary. “For some, it will be hours because they will be training on different points of intervention on passports [et] for others it might be a week because maybe they [interviendraient] at other stages. »
The day before, she had indicated that discussions are underway to temporarily reassign “hundreds of people” who are part of the staff of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the Department of Immigration and Global Affairs Canada.
On Wednesday, she said that “dozens” of Immigration Department employees are “already in place this week” while her colleague at National Revenue, Diane Lebouthillier, said that initial resources have also been provided. on the ARC side.
“What is important to know is that passports are a secure document. They are government property. It represents Canadian citizenship, so there is a process of integrity verification and training of passport officers [qui prend] normally 15 weeks,” explained Mr.me Gould.
Minister Lebouthillier did not provide any estimates as to the number of CRA employees who will eventually come as reinforcements, contenting herself with saying that this was estimated. “We are going to do everything to really help our colleague, but also to help people,” she said, deploring the situation in the passport offices.
Left empty-handed
In Montreal, many Quebecers spent the night from Tuesday to Wednesday outside near the entrance doors of Service Canada offices in the hope of being able to obtain a Canadian passport as quickly as possible in order to be able to travel.
Images broadcast on television showed hundreds of people gathered in front of the Complexe Guy-Favreau, in downtown Montreal, and several dozen others at a Service Canada center in Laval.
Tuesday evening interview on the show world time broadcast on Radio-Canada, Minister Gould announced the establishment of an appointment system with tickets distributed to people in line to prevent them from having to wait for hours .
However, on Wednesday morning, several media reported that many people had to leave empty-handed without obtaining an appointment.
Questioned on this subject in a scrum, the minister indicated that she had to speak with the regional director of Quebec to clarify the situation. “I was under the impression that they would have spoken with everyone in line and I want to check exactly what they did and what the response was,” Ms.me Gould.