People lined up in front of the Service Canada office in Fredericton on Friday morning, optimistic that the wait to apply for a passport would be much shorter than in Montreal.
A day after François Gamache’s announced trip from Montreal to a short line to Fredericton to get a passport, David Nguyen and Vy Nguyen grabbed their dog and ran to New Brunswick from the east end of Montreal with the same mission.
Although they found a Fredericton passport office that was busier than usual, David Nguyen said the Montreal lines were much worse.
“It’s so bad,” he said. “It’s like people are camping outside. The building was bigger than this and they were going around [it]. “
The two friends drove eight hours to avoid the Montreal lineups, and many others in Montreal had the same idea.
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Dozens of people come to New Brunswick from Quebec to avoid delays and long waits for passports.
Dozens of Quebec-registered cars filled Service Canada’s parking lot in Fredereicton, and some had arrived at 3 p.m.
For Michael Haggerty, a Fredericton resident, it was a much shorter trip, and he successfully collected his passport only at lunch break.
“I queued for a couple of minutes because there are a lot of people from Quebec here, but I waited to walk in the door and then they confirmed it was me and they handed me my passport.”
Last week he scheduled an express appointment with his passport, where he filled out the paperwork and paid the fees.
Fredericton resident Michael Haggerty went to get his passport during the lunch break and met a crowd at Service Canada. (Shane Fowler / CBC)
“Then it was like a ghost town. Maybe there were six people. And when I walked in today, there was a queue to get to the commissary and even to get in the door … The place is full of people.”
Some of the Montrealers praised the service in Fredericton.
Vy Nguyen said even getting the passport a month before the planned trip was a stressful prospect, especially since her sister had to wait seven hours at the Montreal office to get one.
“[It’s] too nervous to wait … the whole system makes no sense, “Vy Nguyen said.
The Fredericton office includes an estimated live timeout on its website, which the Montreal office does not have.
Last week, Karina Gould, the federal Minister for Families, Children and Social Development, said 1,200 employees had been hired or were in the process of being hired to handle the large number of applications growing in the offices of Service Canada.
He said there will be no compensation for travelers forced to cancel their plans.
There was also talk of the loan of about 200 employees of the Tax Agency of Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and Global Affairs Canada.
Gamache criticized how the Canada Service has handled things, saying the passport problem was predictable.
“The Trudeau government is well aware that Service Canada has been doing its best for years,” he said. “In the end, it was logical that this crisis was going to happen, it was predictable.”