Passport processing delays continue to frustrate travellers

Service Canada says the current processing time for a passport application is 40 business days, but some travellers, like Medicine Hat’s Kaiden Drabiuk, have had to wait longer than that.

Drabiuk booked a trip to Ireland with a friend in March and applied for his passport the following week. His flight was scheduled to leave on June 11, so he thought he had enough time given the timeline he was told.

“They gave me five weeks,” says Drabiuk. “It was supposed to be delivered around April 20.”

He reached out to Service Canada for an update on April 26, and received a response on June 11, over a month later.

“I just got a message on Friday saying that it hasn’t been processed. There’s been no file created, nothing.”

Drabiuk applied for his passport at the Service Canada office in Medicine Hat and has the dated receipt but says he hasn’t been able to get any confirmation or speak to anyone at the office.

“They asked me to call the passport line which I’ve done before and you can’t get through,” says Drabiuk. “It’s just recorded messages and then they detach you from the line. They said to go back through the currier which is Service Canada here in Medicine Hat so I figured they would have received it, you know?”

In a statement to CHAT News, Service Canada says it “recognizes that an increase in demand for passport services has resulted in lineups and longer wait times for service, and we understand the concern this may cause for clients.”

Service Canada issued 1,273,000 between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022. Another 360,000 have been issued since April 1, 2022, and the projected number of applications is between 3.6 million and 4.3 million for 2022-2023.

To address the increased demand, the office says it “continues to hire and train more employees, including the integration of up to 600 new employees over the course of the year, and the reassignment of up to 600 employees to passport service delivery.”

While Service Canada says 72 per cent of applicants receive their passport within 40 days, Gloria Taylor, Vision Travel manager, says it is important to remember those are business days.

“That’s 40 working days, which is eight weeks,” says Taylor. “So, when you look at that, you’re lucky if you’re going to get your passport back in three months.”

Taylor says some of her clients have had to travel to cities like Calgary to pick up last-minute passports.

“It’s down to the last crunch … and they’ve had to go to Calgary to pick them up the day before they were ready to fly,” says Taylor. “Some of those applications haven’t been submitted to Calgary and were still in Ottawa, it was very stressful.”

Service Canada encourages travellers to wait to book travel until they have a valid passport but says “employees across the country are working hard to ensure that anyone with travel plans is prioritized and receives a passport prior to their travel date.”

“Usually, you have to have proof that you have the trip booked, and that still might not get you to the front of the line,” warns Taylor. “But the passport office has been good with trying to accommodate some of our clients who have had issues.”

Service Canada’s website now has estimated wait times for passport offices in order to allow travellers to better plan for trips.

by Meghan Cobb

Passport processing delays continue to frustrate travellers

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