Aly Michalsky was planning to fly on Thursday for a dream vacation, a two and a half week Thai tour with friends.
Instead, her teen was sitting at her home in Montreal because she applied for a passport 12 weeks ago but missed her passport. She had to postpone or cancel her travel plans for in the last few months in a large number of backlogs at passport offices across the country. One of 140}.
"It was something I had saved for over two years," 19-year-old Michaelski booked with her friend on the CBC News Network non-refundable. I talked about the tour.
Michaelsky's mother, Christine Pariotti, will begin the process of applying for her daughter's passport on March 17th and will be mailed by May 3rd. She said she was. She started recording the call — If there could already be 200-300 people in line, Pariotti was told — a transfer was needed and she waited more than She said she was.
They involved local parliamentarians, and Pariotti called for them "almost every day," she said.
Their efforts were in vain . On Wednesday, they went to the passport office in Laval with a final effort, but Michaelski said four or five hours later, he was told he had no promise. At that time, she realized she couldn't go.
Paliotti stated that the cost of the trip itself would exceed $ 4,000, but the total cost, including pre-travel vaccination and shopping, is estimated to be at least $ 5,000. Did.
"I worked hard for my money and took advantage of the first opportunity I had to do what I always wanted to do," said Michaelsky. "It is catastrophic that I have to tell my friend that I couldn't go with her ."
Triage system
The federal government is responsible for the line meandering around passport offices nationwide, including Vancouver and {163. }London, Ont, to An "unprecedented surge" in the application as the trip reopens after a two-year pandemic limit.
The level of demand is not the only issue. Passport service minister Karina Gould told Ottawa reporters Thursday that 85% of the requests were for new passports, of which 43% were for children. He said both were necessary. A more complex application process.
According to Mr. Gould, the government has added staff to the ground to curb the confusion of , and Service Canada has managers. And walk in line. Then discuss with the passport job seeker and then contact the customer service agent.
This triage system ensures that those who most urgently need a passport based on flight time (those who fly in the next 12, 24, 36, and 48 hours) will receive priority service. Helps to do.
Mr. Gould also has more passports, Que. She said it was mass-printed at the Gatineau processing center in Gatineau and sent from other locations to to relieve the stress of small passport offices. There are no large industrial printers.
See | is the government's latest effort to deal with the backlog: Family Karina Gould, Minister of Social Development, Children, told reporters to the government on Thursday. She has increased the number of workers, made passport printing more efficient, and addressed the backlog issue that has frustrated travelers for months. Still, she says, "there is no easy solution."
Wait days in the rain
The government's new triage strategywill be in Montreal on Thursday some desires I encountered a complaint. The Guy Favlow complex, as Gould said, is experiencing the worst delays in the country.
Hundreds of travelers line up in the rain for days, and police are called in to help control the crowd.
Antoinette Corbeil, who had been waiting in line for 36 hours, was dissatisfied with the transition from a first-come-first-served system to a time-based system.
"Last night we organized ourselves to our numbers ... And they have other people in front of us," she says. I did. "It's unfair."
In the photo | Long wait in the rain at the Montreal Passport office:
After the triage system was launched in Montreal, it will be expanded and rolled back to Toronto on Thursday, going to in Vancouver on June 27th.
Favreau said Montreal was seeing "much better progress" on Thursday, but tracking wait times on thegovernment website . Thirty-five professional passport offices nationwide have warned people that a delay of at least six hours is expected at the Guy-Favreau complex.
Similar wait times were seen at other busy sites such as Ottawa's only passport office on Meadowlands Drive.
Traveling a distance
Some passport seekers are literally traveling a mile to get their travel documents in time.
In Montreal, Francois Gamaches had to leave Thursday for a three-week trip to France to bury his father-in-law. He is 200km north of Quebec City after a Saturday Transport Canada agent told him that it was "nearly impossible" to process his files in a week. I went to Chicoutimi.
So he waited for 30 hours over two days, but was unsuccessful.
With the advice of the client, he drove to Fredericton, about 800 km away, where he tried his luck at the passport office. He got his passport on Wednesday after waited three hours.
Gamache estimated that he spent nearly $ 1,000 on food, hotels , and petrol during the saga.
Finally, "I was really exhausted and even very emotional. I had a lot of trouble getting it," he said.
Despite their efforts in vain, Pariotti does not blame the passport agent for "having to deal with all the pressure of those who are angry with them." Said that he was spending extra time.
Instead, she was dissatisfied with what she described as a chaotic process and lack of communication by staff, as well as receiving inconsistent information from the passport agent. I am.
"It's the citizens who share [information]. There are Facebook pages in Montreal and the surrounding area, and we've got a lot of information to help each other," she said. "So I'm really angry with the people who organize this and they're not doing any more."
Hear | Government Preparation "Not enough," says the minister: Thousands of people have been waiting for their passports for a long time, threatening their travel plans. ing. Minister Karina Gould said the government's preparations were "not enough," and she describes what they are doing to speed things up.