7DaysinParadise
Travel => General Travel => Topic started by: flopnfly on October 30, 2007, 06:19:34 PM
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Passport Canada Backlog Continues
Demand for documents continues to grow and so do wait times.
Passport Canada is reporting continued long delays in processing mailed-in passport applications, despite a streamlined renewal process and hundreds of new employees. And there is concern those delays will only get longer as the busy winter travel season approaches.
It now takes a minimum of six weeks to get a passport through the mail; two weeks longer than the agency's benchmark of four weeks. That does not include the time it takes to get applications and documents through Canada Post.
Passport Canada spokesman Fabien Lengelle says many more people have applied for passports in the past six months than applied within the same period last year. "The reason we have delays is that we have a very, very high demand," Lengelle said.
A year ago in October 2006, Passport Canada was issuing about 13,000 passports a day. By late this spring that number reached 21,000. Since the start of April, the agency issued 2.2 million passports, a 42-per-cent increase from the same period in 2006-2007 when just 1.5 million were issued. In June, then-foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay announced measures to speed up the processing of passport applications, including a simplified renewal process. At the time, there was a backlog of roughly 170,000 applications. Since then, Passport Canada has hired nearly 700 new employees, raising the number of passport officers and clerks to the equivalent of more than 2,600 full-time personnel. Agency officials will not divulge the size of the current backlog, arguing that the number fluctuates from day-to-day.
Canadians who can apply in person, are willing to pay more and who can prove they will be travelling sooner, can get a passport within 24 hours on an urgent basis, or through Passport Canada's 'express' service. But that doesn't help the thousands of Canadians who have no choice but to use the mail system to obtain travel documents.
Demand for passports has increased dramatically since the United States imposed rules requiring them for air travellers. Similar rules are expected to be in place as early as next summer for land travel across the U.S. border.