(Ottawa) The federal government maintained on Tuesday that it had succeeded in catching up with a gigantic backlog in passport applications in the country: the minister responsible for the file estimated that 98% of late applications had now been processed.
Last October, most new passport applications were processed on time, but thousands of Canadians who had applied before that date were still experiencing excessive delays.
Those delays have finally come to an end, Social Development Minister Karina Gould announced on Tuesday. “The backlog is pretty much gone,” she said at a press conference on the sidelines of the Liberal cabinet retreat in Hamilton, Ont.
The COVID-19 pandemic had caused a nearly two-year hiatus in passport applications, but once Canadians started traveling again, that demand suddenly skyrocketed.
This increase has led to long lines at federal offices across the country – some alarmed travelers even slept outside a passport office last summer hoping to catch their plane in time.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
People waiting outside hoping to get their new passports, June 2022.
On the other hand, some people who had submitted their application last summer are only receiving their passports today, admitted Minister Gould on Tuesday, offering her apologies.
There may be several reasons why a few people are still waiting for their precious document, she said. Some applications are more complex due to issues such as shared custody of children, for example, while others have been singled out for admissibility or integrity reasons.
“Canadians can trust that they should be able to get their passports on time, as long as everything is correct with their application,” she said.
Reinforcements that should stay
To make up for its enormous backlog, the federal government has almost doubled the number of employees responsible for processing passports since March, and civil servants have accumulated thousands of overtime hours.
The new employees are also expected to stay on to help meet future peak periods, Ms.me Gould.
The Minister also expects a large number of Canadians to apply over the next few years, as the very first passports issued with a 10-year expiry date, in the summer of 2013, will have to be renewed from next July.
Service Canada is expected to process up to 3.5 million passport applications in the current fiscal year, she said, double from last year. Between three and five million requests are expected to be made each year for the next few years.
The good news, added Mr.me Gould is that Service Canada will be better able to handle this level of demand than it was last spring. Between 80% and 85% of applications submitted last year came from people who had never had a passport before, which made their file longer to process, explained the minister.
“However, what we are planning, especially for this summer, is a higher level of renewals, which are much simpler,” she told reporters in Hamilton.
Although passport offices are operating normally again, Mme Gould always encourages people planning to travel to check their passport’s expiration date and apply as soon as possible to avoid delays.