Aoife Dowling can only fly in August, but she is not waiting to apply for her daughter’s passport.
In an attempt to start the process, Dowling arrived at the passport office in Surrey, British Columbia, at 5:30 a.m. Friday after hearing that the lineups were slightly better than Vancouver, where she unsuccessfully tried to make a renewal on Tuesday.
Equipped with several spare chargers, sunscreen and water, Dowling briefed his co-workers on his plans and told the CTV News Channel that he would work on the phone while waiting in line.
She says she has spoken to someone in line about whether Uber Eats is delivering to lineups.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” she said. “We’ll come up with something.”
Dowling’s story is one of many heard across the country as Canadians struggle to get approval for their passport applications in time for planned trips this year.
Service Canada was flooded with applications after a lull created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The situation is particularly dire in Montreal, where people have been camping for days outside the passport office in the city center. At one point this week, police were called in to help control the crowds.
Some have advertised services to stand in line for passport applicants. And in Vancouver, a woman shared her experience at TikTok from flying to Edmonton just to renew her passport.
On Thursday, the Minister for Families, Children and Social Development, Karina Gould, in charge of passport services, said she was directing Canada to do more in major urban centers, where delays are most severe.
The plan is to sort and prioritize the services of “those who have urgent travel needs within the next 24 to 48 hours,” Gould said in a statement.
The triage system has been working well in recent days at centers in Laval and Saint-Laurent, Quebec, she said, with all of the 250-300 people in line at both sites talking to a team of managers by 10 a.m. Thursday.
Although Friday is St. Jean-Baptiste’s Day in Quebec, Gould’s office told CTV News that there are people working in the passport office who accept appointments as part of this new ticketing system introduced by the federal government.
“It will be introduced in other major metropolitan and urban areas across the country,” Gould told reporters on Thursday.
“It’s actually a strategy we’ve been working on for a few weeks because we had to train Service Canada staff at Service Canada centers.”
Along with hiring 600 new staff to process passport applications, the federal government has recruited staff from other departments and agencies.
This includes dozens of immigrants, refugees and Canadian citizens, more than 200 people from the Canadian Revenue Agency and about 70 from Canadian Statistics.
Some passport applications are even sent from Montreal to Gatineau, which has a larger printing service to help with the backlog.
Dowling told the CTV News Channel that, in a sense, she has feelings for those who work in the passport office and are now two years behind.
However, as a dual Irish citizen, she renewed her passport online within three weeks and said the Canadian system could be more efficient in the long run.
With files from CTV News
Add Comment