Aly Michalsky was to board a plane on Thursday en route to her dream vacation, a two-and-a-half-week tour of Thailand with a friend.
Instead, the teenager was sitting at home in Montreal after not being able to get his passport on time, even though he applied for it 12 weeks ago. She is one of many Canadians who have had to postpone or cancel their travel plans in recent months amid a massive backlog at passport offices across the country.
“It was something I saved for over two years,” Michalsky, 19, told CBC News Network about the non-refundable tour he booked with a friend.
Christine Paliotti, Michalsky’s mother, said the process to apply for her daughter’s passport began on March 17 and was supposed to be mailed before May 3. When he did not arrive, it was the start of a series of phone calls, where there could be between 200 and 300 people already in line, Paliotti said: waiting, to be told they needed a transfer and more waiting.
They even implicated their local deputy, who according to Paliotti made calls to them “almost every day”.
Aly Michalsky, on the right, and his mother, Christine Paliotti, went out of their way to get a passport to Michalsky before his dream vacation on Thursday. She was forced to cancel her non-refundable trip to Thailand when she was unable to obtain the travel document in time. (CBC News)
His efforts were in vain. On Wednesday, they headed to the Laval passport office in a last-ditch effort, but Michalsky said that after four or five hours, they were told there would be no appointments. That’s when he realized he couldn’t go.
Paliotti said the trip itself cost more than $ 4,000, but estimated that the total costs, including pre-trip vaccines and purchases, were at least $ 5,000.
“I worked hard for my money and took the first opportunity I had to do something I’ve always wanted to do,” Michalsky said. “It’s devastating to have to tell my friend I couldn’t go with her.”
Triage system
The federal government has attributed the winding lines to passport offices across the country, including Vancouver and London, Ontario, to an “unprecedented increase” in applications as travel reopens later. of two years of pandemic restrictions.
People camped in line at night in front of a Service Canada passport office in Vancouver on Wednesday. Long queues and waiting times are the result of a massive accumulation of applications at passport offices across the country. (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press)
The high level of demand is not the only problem. Family Minister Karina Gould, the minister responsible for passport services, told reporters in Ottawa on Thursday that 85 per cent of applications are for new passports, of which 43 per cent are for new passports. children, both of which involve a more complex application process.
Gould said the government is adding more staff on the ground to help curb chaos, with Service Canada deploying managers to follow the lines and talk to passport applicants before they reach a customer service agent.
This triage system will help ensure that people who need a passport more urgently based on flight time (those who fly in the next 12, 24, 36 and 48 hours) receive priority service, he said.
Gould also said more passports will be printed in bulk at the Gatineau Processing Center, Que., And sent to other locations to reduce the stress of smaller passport offices that do not have large industrial printers.
MIRAR | Government’s latest efforts to address the backlog:
The government is adding more staff to address passport delays
Karina Gould, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, told reporters on Thursday that the government is increasing the number of workers and has made passport printing more efficient in addressing the delay issues that have frustrated travelers for months. . Still, he says “there is no easy solution.”
Waiting days in the rain
The government’s new triage strategy met with some frustration Thursday at the Guy-Favreau complex in Montreal, which Gould said is experiencing the worst delays in the country.
Hundreds of potential travelers have lined up for days in the rain and police have been called in to help with crowd control.
Antoinette Corbeil, who had been waiting in line for 36 hours, was not satisfied with the change of an arrival system, first served to one based on flight times.
“We organized last night according to our numbers … and they are letting other people pass in front of us,” he said. “This is not fair.”
A PHOTOS | Long waits in the rain at the Montreal passport office:
After the triage system began in Montreal, it spread to Toronto on Thursday and will launch in Vancouver on June 27th.
Although Gould said Thursday that Montreal was seeing “much better progress,” the government’s website that keeps track of waiting times at 35 specialized passport offices across the country still warned that people were waiting. delays of at least six hours at the Guy-Favreau complex.
Other busy places such as Ottawa’s only passport office on Meadowlands Drive showed similar waiting times.
Going the distance
Some passport applicants literally make an extra effort to get their travel documents on time.
In Montreal, François Gamache had to leave on Thursday for a three-week trip to France to bury his father-in-law. After a Transport Canada agent told him on Saturday that it would be “almost impossible” for his case to be processed in a week, he went to Chicoutimi, 200 miles north of Quebec City.
François Gamache of Montreal has the passport he got after driving to Fredericton. The government says the “unprecedented increase” in travel document requests came after two years of pandemic restrictions. (François Gamache / Enviat)
There, he waited 30 hours for two days, without success.
On the advice of a client, he drove to Fredericton, nearly half a mile away, to try his luck at the passport office there. He finally got his passport on Wednesday after a three-hour wait.
Gamache estimated that he spent about $ 1,000 on food, hotels and gasoline during the saga.
In the end, “I was very exhausted and even very excited. I struggled a lot to get it,” he said.
While his efforts have been in vain, Paliotti has said he does not blame passport agents “who have to deal with all the pressure from people who get angry with them” and that they work overtime there.
Instead, she is frustrated by what she described as a disorganized process and lack of communication from officials, in addition to receiving conflicting information from passport agents.
“It is the citizens who share [information]; There was a Facebook page for Montreal and the surrounding area, and we received a lot of information helping each other, “he said.” So I’m very angry with who’s organizing it and not doing it anymore. “
LISTENING The government’s preparations “were not enough,” the minister said.
Metro Morning11: 14Long waiting times for “unacceptable” passports, says Minister Karina Gould
Thousands of people have been waiting for their passports for a long time, threatening their travel plans. Minister Karina Gould says the government’s preparations “were not enough” and says what they are doing to speed things up.