Kelly Potter Scott was looking forward to taking her 10-year-old daughter across the Canadian border for the first time on a girls’ getaway to upstate New York in a few weeks.
But as she spent hours waiting outside a Toronto passport office, Ms Potter Scott had to trust the words of an official who assured her that her daughter would have her documents for the weekend.
‘If we don’t get it my daughter just won’t be able to come with us which would be unfortunate,’ said Ms Potter Scott. “Fingers crossed (that) we get it in time.”
Ms Potter Scott was among dozens of people in a queue that stretched down a street corner on Wednesday, some carrying folding chairs as they made their way to the door to submit their passport applications.
Some travelers have expressed concern that their summer vacation plans could be cancelled, at a time when post-pandemic wanderlust is fueling a backlog in processing times for passport applications.
Authorities braced for a surge in demand for passports as COVID-19 border measures eased, bringing in 600 new staff to help sort out the influx of documents. Last month, Service Canada reopened all passport service counters across the country, and additional counters were added in more than 300 centres.
But as many Canadians seek to venture abroad after more than two years of pandemic-restricted travel, some passport applicants say they’ve been forced to camp outside service centers or postpone their trips due to delays.
The request seemed to take federal officials by surprise.
“The fact is, while we were anticipating a surge in volume, this massive increase in demand has exceeded forecasts and exceeded capacity,” Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould told reporters. a parliamentary committee on May 30.
“We know that many people have been placed in very difficult circumstances. And that’s why I’ve asked officials to work as hard as possible to meet demand.”
Between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021, Service Canada issued 363,000 passports, as services were limited to urgent travel cases.
But with the reopening of the world, demand has exploded. Between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022, nearly 1.3 million passports were issued.
Since April, more than 317,000 passports have been issued and the federal forecast for 2022-2023 is between 3.6 million and 4.3 million applications.
According to projections last week, 75% of Canadians who apply for a passport receive one within 40 working days, a spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada said in a statement. Ninety-six percent of those who submit an application in person at a specialized site receive a passport within 10 working days.
Nadia Elsayed of Oakville, Ont., said she mailed her infant daughter’s passport application in early April, indicating a tentative travel date in late May.
Ms Elsayed waited for the envelope to arrive in her letterbox as that date approached, then drove past. With passport services not answering the phone, she turned to her MP and discovered that her daughter’s documents were in a pile of other applications in Gatineau, Quebec.
She arranged for her daughter’s application to be sent to another office in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga. Officials told her they aim to have the passport ready 48 hours before her family travels to the United States this month, Ms Elsayed said.
“It’s still a bit up in the air, to be honest,” she said. It just feels like we’re hanging on and hoping things go well.”
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