Canadian passport continues to plummet in power according to new global ranking. How does it compare to other countries?

2025/07/30 Leave a comment

What a silly, stupid and misleading headline, dropping one level hardly plummeting:

Over the last two decades, the Canadian passport has been one of the world’s strongest but a recent report suggests it is plummeting. 

Canada’s passport ties with Estonia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 8th place out of 199 in the world with visa-free access to 184 countries, according to the latest data from Henley Passport Index . 

The recent ranking shows the Canadian passport is down from seventh place since the last index update in January, losing visa-free access to four nations while seeing a much larger drop from Canada’s 2014 peak when it ranked second. 

Although the Canadian passport has consistently ranked within the top 10 globally, in recent years, other countries are gaining visa-free access to destinations quicker than Canada, which is among five countries to have seen the largest plunge in rankings over the past decade. 

Here’s how Canada’s passport ranks compared to other countries including the U.S. 

Which countries have the most powerful passports?

Singapore’s passport has once again topped the list allowing citizens to enter 193 destinations out of a possible 227 without a prior visa. On the other end of the spectrum, Afghanistan remains at the bottom of the list, with its passport gaining visa-free access to just 25 countries— a massive mobility gap of 168 countries compared to Singapore. 

Other Asian countries are also topping the list, with Japan and South Korea tied for second place, giving holders visa-free access to 190 countries. 

Seven European nations take the third spot with visa-free access to 189 countries, including Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Spain. The fourth and fifth places are also largely dominated by other European countries, but New Zealand is the one outlier who shares fifth place with Europe’s Greece and Switzerland. 

Since six months ago, India has seen the largest jump in ranking, shooting up from 85th place to 77th with citizens granted access to 59 visa-free destinations, but only gaining entrance to two additional countries. In the latest data, Saudi Arabian citizens can now travel to 91 countries after adding four destinations, making this the largest gain in visa-free access from all passports since the start of the year. 

Source: Canadian passport continues to plummet in power according to new global ranking. How does it compare to other countries?

Filed under Citizenship, Passports Tagged with

Canadians can soon get their passport in 30 business days — or it’s free

2025/03/10 Leave a comment

Good to have this kind of service guarantee although more of a reflection of current service levels than a stretch commitment:

The federal government announced on Friday that it’s going to be speeding up the processing for passports so Canadians can get their documents within 30 business days — or they’ll be free.

Under the change, any complete passport application will be processed within 30 business days or it will be free, with the passport fees to be refunded. The 30-day period does not include the mailing time of the application or the passport itself.

The 30-day limit applies whether Canadians submit their application online, in person or by mail.

Citizens’ Services Minister Terry Beech did not say when the process would begin, however, only noting it would happen later this year.

The shift by the government comes just three months after thousands of Canadians saw passport delays amid the Canada Post strike, which followed months of issues due to post-COVID-19 delays.

Beech also noted in a press release that the federal government continues to roll out its online passport renewal program, which began in December 2024, with eligible Canadians able to complete their application, pay fees and upload a professional digital photo from their computer or mobile device.

The government says the phased roll-out is being used to monitor, adapt and refine the process to ensure it is working before it’s rolled out to more Canadians in the coming months.

Source: Canadians can soon get their passport in 30 business days — or it’s free

Filed under Government, Passports Tagged with

Human smuggler issued new Canadian passport after court ordered surrender of travel document 

2024/11/21 Leave a comment

Sigh, highlighting systemic coordination failure:

The federal government issued a new passport to an admitted human smuggler after he was ordered to surrender the travel document as part of court-imposed release conditions, CBC News has learned. 

The new passport was discovered in June 2023 by RCMP investigators executing a search warrant at the Montreal home of Thesingarasan Rasiah during a probe targeting an international human smuggling network that Rasiah allegedly headed, according to court records obtained by CBC News. 

At the time, Rasiah was living at home with an electronic ankle bracelet on strict conditions while awaiting sentencing on a February 2023 guilty plea to one count of breaching the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for his role in the smuggling of a Sri Lankan national from the U.S. into Canada in 2021.

Rasiah had been forced to surrender his passport to the RCMP in 2021 as part of his release conditions related to the human smuggling attempt that was intercepted by police in Cornwall, Ont., located about 120 kilometres west of Montreal along the Canada-U.S. border.

Rasiah was also forbidden from applying for any new travel documents.

Smuggling operation linked to deaths

Rasiah was charged on April 1, 2021, after he was caught in a Cornwall motel parking lot receiving a Sri Lankan national who had just been smuggled into Canada. He was sentenced to 15 months in jail in September 2023. 

He was re-arrested this past May by the RCMP on charges he led an international human smuggling organization that moved hundreds of people north and south across the Canada-U.S. border. He remains in custody.

Investigators with the Cornwall Regional Task Force — which includes officers from the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) — also linked Rasiah’s organization to the deaths of nine people on the St. Lawrence River in late March 2023. Two families — one from India, the other from Romania — drowned with a boatman in rough river waters trying to get into the U.S. 

The new passport seized by RCMP during the search of Rasiah’s home in 2023 was issued by Service Canada on April 11, 2023, less than two weeks after eight bodies were pulled from the river, according to a copy of the document filed with the Ontario Court of Justice. …

Source: Human smuggler issued new Canadian passport after court ordered surrender of travel document

Filed under Citizenship, Passports Tagged with ,

Hours on hold and long queues: Canadians still grappling with poor passport service

2024/05/09 Leave a comment

I had thought that the earlier problems with backlogs had been solved. Largely yes according to the data but it now appears that the problems are wait times for call centres and for in person service. Ongoing accountability issue between IRCC, with policy responsibility, and Service Canada for service delivery. Appears that the accountability issues mentioned in the IRCC evaluation in 2020 have not been addressed:

Canadians routinely wait hours on the phone and in person when dealing with Passport Canada, leaving many travellers infuriated by the quality of the agency’s customer service.

Post-COVID chaos at passport offices prompted the federal government to step up and promise a series of changes to get the documents into travellers’ hands in a timely manner.

Passport Canada claims that after a prolonged period of pandemic-related delays, the agency has returned to its normal “service standard” of getting passports to most people in 10 or 20 business days, depending on where an application is initially filed.

But the agency’s service standard makes no promises about how quickly they will serve people in person or over the phone.

Data and anecdotal reports suggest Passport Canada’s customer service track record is poor.

A CBC News analysis of passport office wait times shows people in urban centres often wait several hours to get face-to-face with a customer service agent at Passport Canada-branded offices.

On a weekday morning in mid-March, for example, Passport Canada’s website estimated the wait time at its west-end Ottawa location at 2 hours and 45 minutes.

In downtown Toronto that month, would-be passport holders faced a three-hour wait to get to the front of the line before noon.

The wait times in late April were much the same: people in Mississauga, Ont. were being told then they’d have to wait about 2 hours and 45 minutes to be served if they were on site at 9:30 a.m. There was a bright spot in Halifax — there the wait was only an hour.

On Monday, prospective passport holders in Brampton, Ont. faced a nearly three-hour wait shortly after that city’s office opened, according to Passport Canada data published online.

At Calgary’s Sunpark Drive location, travellers were told it would be at least three hours before they could speak to somebody after it opened its doors for the day, online data shows.

More than 12 hours on hold

Debbie Braun is a retiree who lives in High River, Alta., less than an hour south of Calgary.

She told CBC News that the prospect of those long in-person wait times led her to skip the drive into the city and send her passport application by mail in February.

And given Passport Canada’s commitment to process the vast majority of mail-in applications “within 20 days,” Braun thought she’d have her hands on a renewed passport well before her Mexican vacation in April.

In the end, it took twice as long. Braun said she got her passport in 40 days — and only after a bureaucratic battle with multiple phone calls and more than 12 hours spent on hold.

It was the same time frame for Braun’s daughter, who filed separately by mail from northern Alberta.

That’s despite Passport Canada’s commitment that 90 per cent of all mail-in applications will be processed within 20 days.

The agency routinely blows past that target.

Government data from 2022-23 reveals Passport Canada only met that 20-day processing target 52 per cent of the time.

Numbers from the past fiscal year haven’t been published online yet. A year ago, Karina Gould, who was the minister in charge of passports at the time, suggested there had been a big improvement.

Andrew Griffith is a former director general at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) who also worked at Service Canada and on passport files during his long tenure in government.

“The wait times are excessive. Nobody leaves happy if they have to wait three hours in person or on the phone,” he told CBC News.

“They either need to staff up or find other ways to reduce the time lag. I think, from a service point of view, it’s really problematic and it’s the kind of thing that undermines the faith of people in government institutions.”

While they’ve promised the option in the past, the government doesn’t yet allow Canadians to apply for a passport online.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller has said “system vulnerabilities” have prevented Ottawa from fulfilling that commitment. “It’s not secure,” he told reporters in February.

People can only fill out the required forms on the computer. Applicants still have to print them out and send them by mail for processing, or submit them in person.

That’s what Braun did — but then she wanted to use the government’s online application status tracker to keep tabs on her progress.

The federal government launched the tracker after the chaos of 2022-23, billing it as a big fix to prevent future passport pileups.

But Braun soon discovered she needed a file number to log in. She said she had to call to get that information because the online file number generator was “useless” and never gave her one after days of failed attempts.

That’s when the trouble started.

‘Who has time for that?’

“That first morning I called, there were 376 calls ahead of me in the queue,” she told CBC News. “I had no choice — I had to sit there and wait.”

Passport Canada had somehow affixed an old mailing address to her file. Braun filled out the right address when she sent it in, she said, and she has a copy of the application to prove it.

Each time she dialled through, she said, she was faced with a wall of other callers in front of her.

Later in February, she was number 352 on the line to speak to an operator.

In March, 377 people were ahead of her on the phone. On another March call, she was caller number 367.

On her last and final call that month, there were more than 500 callers ahead of her on hold, she said.

“I mean, who has time for that? Five hundred calls?” Braun said.

Braun said her average wait time to get an agent on the line was two hours and 40 minutes.

“How can somebody at an office sit on hold for two and a half hours?” she said.

Braun described some of the operators as “quite rude” and argumentative, adding they blamed her for an address error that was really their fault.

“I worked for Greyhound Canada for 35 years and if I would’ve done what Passport Canada does to the people calling in, I would have been fired,” she said. “It just angers me and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, you know?”

She said that while the government has “bragged” about its changes to the passport program, it has nothing to boast about.

“They just tell the people what they want to hear — ‘Oh, we’ve fixed everything’ — and the systems they put in place to improve things aren’t adequate because they don’t think it through,” she said.

40 days to get a passport

No one federal department is responsible for the passport program.

That’s a problem, Griffith said, because nobody wants to take ownership of a vital service that touches so many Canadians personally.

In 2023, after the passport fiasco, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau created a new cabinet position called “citizens’ services,” with a minister responsible for “serving as our government’s champion for service delivery excellence.”

Trudeau’s mandate letter to the minister, Terry Beech, said he should focus on “delivering services where and when Canadians need them” and deal with “service delivery challenges” on passports.

A spokesperson for Beech said he was not available for an interview.

Griffith said Beech’s appointment was political — an attempt to show people the government cares about wait times. But the minister does not seem to have the power to push through any real change, he added.

“I never really thought the ministerial role was a meaningful position,” he said. “I don’t think it needs a minister unless you’re really going to revamp government. You never see Beech, he’s not very active.”

IRCC, which is taking the lead on introducing online passport applications, said in a media statement that it “remains committed” to the concept but didn’t offer a timeline for a rollout.

Employment and Social Development Canada, which is responsible for managing the passport program on behalf of IRCC, told CBC News that it sometimes “experiences increased demand on a seasonal basis as popular travel times approach.”

As for long call centre wait times, the department said time spent on hold “can vary and some clients may experience either longer or shorter hold times.”

The department says it encourages people to use the online status tracker to “get updates on their applications without needing to call or visit Service Canada.”

“Service Canada remains committed to service excellence and improving the experience for clients applying for passports,” the department said.

Braun, meanwhile, said her experience left her with little faith in government’s ability to deliver.

“I followed the rules, I did what I was supposed to do and then you have to go through the nightmare and you get upset,” Braun said.

“It’s a good thing I did the 10-year passport thing because I don’t think I could go through this again in five years.”

Source: Hours on hold and long queues: Canadians still grappling with poor passport service

Filed under Citizenship, Passports Tagged with

What ideas were left on the cutting room floor in passport redesign? We’ll never know

2023/07/24 Leave a comment

Pity. Good comments by Alex Marland:

Garry Keller recalls the first images passport staff brought before the then-Conservative government for consideration during the last major passport overhaul.

“We laughed,” Keller recalls. “It looked like a C-minus effort.”

The original concepts featured a Canada goose, a beaver and a maple leaf — ideas the government found uninspired and “lowest-common denominator.”

Keller served as chief of staff to John Baird, who oversaw the passport redesign as foreign minister. Baird and his team sent the department back to the drawing board.

“I think we delivered a passport that was certainly esthetically beautiful in the inside, but also pulled from the historical story of Canada,” Keller said.

When he saw the latest redesign of the Canadian passport unveiled last May, he said it reminded him of those early concept images.

Canadians might never know what ideas were considered and rejected before the federal government finalized the reimagined and often lambasted design for the passport. 

When a request for earlier proposed versions under the Access to Information Act turned up no result, the Immigration Department said draft artwork for the new passport wasn’t stored for security reasons, since the artwork is considered a security feature in and of itself.

“Due to the classified nature of the passport design during its development, (Government of Canada) restrictions on the storage and communication of classified information and the difficulties of operating during pandemic restrictions, the passport program does not store information concerning drafts of the passport design,” the department said in an emailed response to the information request.

The government doesn’t even own the early drafts or proposals since they were produced by an outside contractor, the department clarified in a later statement.

The department said the esthetic and thematic content in the passport serve solely as a support for what they call “secure line work.”

“Security features and the artwork therefore cannot be dissociated,” the department said.

Experts say the design is sure to have gone through several iterations before the Liberals landed on what critics have called a generic document that rejects the previous historic motif.

The theme was first identified more than 10 years ago and approved in 2020 after much consultation, the Immigration Department said in a statement Friday. Only one theme was approved for consideration and developed into a design, the department said.

“The esthetic design must be completed at the beginning of the process to feed the downstream steps mentioned above,” the statement read.

The final version features new security measures and stylized artwork.

Historic images representing Canada’s past have been replaced with pastel tableaus of Canadian life and fauna on the visa pages.

On one page, children in colourful parkas build a snowman outside a barn while a snowy owl looks on. On another, a boy appears frozen mid-jump off a dock as canoeists paddle by.

Under ultraviolet light, the owl takes flight and the boy splashes into the lake.

The result sparked instant controversy, with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre accusing the Liberals of injecting their “woke ideology” into the passport design.

The Royal Canadian Legion expressed disappointment that an image of the Vimy Memorial in France would no longer be featured in the passport, calling it a “poor decision.”

The Terry Fox Hometown Run also expressed regret that Fox’s Marathon of Hope run won’t be honoured in the pages of the passport anymore.

“I think it’s important to say that this is not partisan,” Social Services Minister Karina Gould said at a press conference at the Ottawa International Airport in May, standing before poster boards of the new designs.

“The design of this passport started 10 years ago and this is really about ensuring the security of the document.”

The passport goes through a major overhaul every 10 years or so and changing the artwork — an element deemed a novelty a decade ago — is considered part of the anti-counterfeiting effort.

In 2012, when the historical images were first introduced, they replaced identical visa pages that featured a large red Maple Leaf surrounded by smaller blue maple leaves.

The immigration department said none of the alternative concept images from the 2012 redesign were kept either.

The images in the 2012 passport were part of a governmentwide rebrand that was underway when the Conservatives came to power, said Alex Marland, the Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership at Acadia University.

The Conservatives “were obsessed with co-ordinating government so that it could be communicating variations of the same message in different ways that were very much connected to the party’s messaging,” Marland said in an interview.

While most people would hope government decisions are made in a non-partisan way, the reality is that government is politicized all the time, he said.

This time around, the passport resign was underway at the same time as a polarized debate over certain aspects of Canada’s history.

Many have questioned whether monuments to Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, should continue to stand, given his role in the establishment of residential schools.

The Liberal government also tends to take a different approach to projects like the passport, and usually opts to rely heavily on focus groups, Marland said.

“It’s very different than the Harper Conservatives, which (were) far more ideologically focused,” he said.

The government consulted with several federal departments, Indigenous groups, and others, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said at the presentation of the new design.

“One of the things that we heard is that we want to celebrate our diversity and inclusion, we want to celebrate our natural environment … and try to bake those elements into the design,” he said.

“But to be absolutely clear, we’re extremely proud of Canada’s history.”

For his part, Marland said it would have been in the public interest to release any concept designs that were part of those consultations.

Canadians will soon see the final design, expected to go into circulation this summer.

Source: What ideas were left on the cutting room floor in passport redesign? We’ll never know

Filed under Passports Tagged with ,

After months of backlogs, Canadians can now check their passport application status online

2023/03/23 Leave a comment

Progress. Presumably we will see in coming weeks if there are any glitches in the app or hopefully not:

Canadians waiting anxiously for their passports to arrive before a trip abroad now have a new option to check the status of their applications.

The federal government launched a new online portal on Tuesday that allows recent applicants to see where their applications stand.

Passport offices became overwhelmed with applications last year as the government began to ease pandemic-related travel restrictions. The result was a backlog that hobbled the application system.

Source: After months of backlogs, Canadians can now check their passport application status online

Filed under Passports Tagged with ,

Canada’s passport backlog ‘virtually eliminated,’ minister says

2023/01/26 Leave a comment

Welcome development but government failed to plan for surge in demand, despite having been noted in various planning documents:

Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould says the passport backlog has been “virtually eliminated” and processing times in passport offices are back to pre-pandemic levels.

The announcement comes amid a three-day Liberal cabinet retreat in Hamilton, Ont.

“Since its peak in June 2022, after dedicating resources to ensure these Canadians receive their passports, approximately 98 per cent of the backlog of applications have been processed,” Gould said, speaking in a press conference on Tuesday.

“The backlog is virtually eliminated.”

Passport offices were snowed under by applications as COVID-19 restrictions eased last year.

Canadians eyeing sunny vacations and international visits needed passports that gathered dust during the pandemic to be renewed — and the requests inundated the service.

Since April of 2022, Service Canada has issued more than two million passports, according to a press release from Gould’s office. By the end of the fiscal year, she added during her press conference, the government is expecting that number to reach between three and three and a half million.

“That’s more than double what we would have done in the previous year,” Gould said.

Another key contributor to the backlog, she added, was the fact that between 80 to 85 per cent of applications were for new passports for first-time passport holders. Gould explained it is “more complex” to issue these kinds of documents.

Going into the summer, however, she said the government is expecting a higher level of requests for passport renewals — which are “much simpler” to do.

The passport office is also anticipating to receive between three to five million passport applications per year for the next “couple of years,” the minister added.

There are two standards for the delivery of passport applications in Canada. The government aims to delivery in-person passport applications within 10 days, and holds itself to a 20 day standard for applications received by mail or dropped off at a Service Canada Centre.

The months-long waiting periods for passports led critics to accuse the Liberals of being unable to deliver even basic services to Canadians.

At the peak of the backlog, most Canadians were waiting up to 40 working days to get their hands on a new passport.

“To those Canadians and others who have shown such admirable patience during this difficult situation, I once again apologize,” Gould said, speaking on Tuesday.

Looking forward, the government intends to focus its efforts and resources on maintaining service standards, especially as a growth in applications looms just around the corner. Canada started issuing 10-year validity passports in the summer of 2013 — and some of those will be eligible for renewal starting this summer.

The planned announcement comes as Liberals are trailing the Conservatives in most polls of late.

The choice of Hamilton for the retreat is electorally strategic as it is in one of the most competitive regions in the country, and one the Liberals must win big in if they want to stay in power.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau started the second day of his retreat by meeting with Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath.

The Liberal cabinet has a lengthy to-do list over the three-day gathering, including tackling inflation and making the country more competitive.

Source: Canada’s passport backlog ‘virtually eliminated,’ minister says

Filed under Passports Tagged with

Crise des passeports: Jusqu’à deux fois moins d’employés en 2022

2023/01/16 Leave a comment

Of note. See my earlier op-ed Passport delays risk undermining our trust in government on the complexity of linkages between IRCC, responsible for passport policy, and Service Canada, responsible for delivery, and the failure of both to anticipate demand even if official planning documents expected a surge once travel restrictions lifted:

Ottawa a réduit considérablement les effectifs affectés au traitement des demandes de passeport entre 2018 et 2021. Résultat : ils étaient presque deux fois moins au début de 2022 pour répondre aux nombreuses demandes des Canadiens désireux de voyager après la levée des principales mesures de restriction pour les déplacements à l’étranger.

Selon des données obtenues par La Presse en vertu de la Loi sur l’accès à l’information auprès d’Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada, 1512 fonctionnaires étaient chargés de répondre aux demandes de passeport au début de l’année 2018. On n’en comptait plus que 893 en 2021, un nombre qui est passé à 1161 au cours de l’année suivante.

Cette baisse substantielle des effectifs a nui considérablement à la capacité de Passeport Canada de traiter le flot de demandes au cours de l’été 2022, signale Yvon Barrière, vice-président exécutif régional Québec à l’Alliance de la fonction publique du Canada (AFPC). « On avait entre 40 et 50 % de personnel en moins », précise-t-il.

Où sont allés tous ces employés ? Un très grand nombre ont été affectés à d’autres services au plus fort de la pandémie, alors que des mesures de restriction limitaient de façon importante les voyages à l’étranger. De nombreux fonctionnaires de Passeport Canada ont notamment travaillé au traitement des demandes de prestation canadienne d’urgence (PCU) au moment où la COVID-19 forçait l’arrêt de nombreux secteurs d’activité économique.

« Chaque fois qu’il y avait un nouveau programme d’aide aux citoyens, le gouvernement avait tendance à aller chercher du personnel à l’Agence du revenu, à l’Immigration et aux passeports. »

– Yvon Barrière, vice-président exécutif régional Québec à l’Alliance de la fonction publique du Canada

UN AN ET DEMI DE RETARD

Mais selon M. Barrière, la diminution des effectifs n’est pas la seule cause de la crise des passeports qui a fait les manchettes au cours de l’été 2022. Un retard important dans le traitement des demandes au plus fort de la pandémie a aussi aggravé la situation.

« Les demandes de passeport, alors que les gens ne peuvent pas voyager, ils peuvent patienter. Laissez-les de côté, disaient les gestionnaires », indique M. Barrière, qui estime qu’on a ainsi cumulé jusqu’à un an et demi de retard dans le traitement des demandes.

« Tous les ingrédients étaient là pour ce qu’on a connu [à l’été 2022] », soutient-il. Au moment où il n’y avait plus de restrictions pour voyager à l’étranger, les employés se sont donc retrouvés à traiter une hausse considérable de demandes de nouveaux passeports ou de renouvellement. Tout cela avec un retard important cumulé dans les deux années précédentes.

« Ils n’ont pas vu venir la crise », plaide Yvon Barrière. Il estime pourtant que celle-ci était parfaitement prévisible. « Si les gestionnaires avaient prévu le coup, on n’aurait pas eu les files d’attente qu’on a connues », soutient-il.

Quand Ottawa a entrepris d’embaucher du personnel face au flot de demandes, la situation ne s’est pas nécessairement améliorée, du moins pas à court terme. « Il fallait former les employés et souvent, on prenait les meilleurs pour les former. Ils n’avaient pas le temps de traiter les demandes. »

Le représentant syndical rejette par ailleurs l’argument voulant que le grand nombre d’employés en télétravail au cours des trois dernières années ait pu ralentir le traitement des demandes de passeport.

Selon les données obtenues par La Presse, au moins 80 % du personnel traitant les demandes de passeport a travaillé à distance en 2020, 2021 et 2022. « Les gens ont des quotas, ils doivent traiter un certain nombre de demandes chaque jour, qu’ils soient à la maison ou au bureau », explique Yvon Barrière.

« ILS ONT EU LEUR LEÇON »

La majorité des employés prêtés à d’autres services ont été rapatriés, estime-t-il, jugeant que le retard dans le traitement des demandes a été comblé.

« Ils ont eu leur leçon. Ils sont en train de reprendre le contrôle. On ne devrait pas vivre de nouvelle crise », conclut-il.

Immigration, Réfugiés et Citoyenneté Canada n’a pas donné suite aux questions de La Presse, nous invitant à écrire à Emploi et Développement social Canada (EDSC). En réponse à notre courriel, EDSC a précisé ne pas être en mesure de répondre à nos questions vendredi.

Source: Crise des passeports: Jusqu’à deux fois moins d’employés en 2022

Filed under Citizenship, Passports Tagged with , ,

Mason: We have questions about Pierre Poilievre’s passport story

2023/01/12 Leave a comment

Good thorough exposé. Clever gimmicks need to reflect the reality, and be confirmed by the reality. To date, neither “True North” or Rebel Media have picked up Polievre’s claims:

Have you heard the one about the guy from Calgary who couldn’t attend his own wedding in Cuba because he didn’t have a passport?

Even better – it was all Justin Trudeau’s fault.

This remarkable tale, with an emphasis on tale, comes courtesy of the great storyteller himself, Pierre Poilievre. The federal Conservative Leader posted a video online last week in which he chronicled a random meeting he had recently at the Ottawa airport with a man who identified himself as Mustafa, from Calgary.

When Mr. Poilievre asked what he was doing in Ottawa, Mustafa said he was there to get a passport. “You can get a passport in Calgary,” the Opposition leader told the man. “I thought so too, but I applied 10 months ago and it became desperate because I have a wedding in Cuba for myself and I need to get my passport to get there.”

“When’s your wedding?” Mr. Poilievre apparently said.

Dramatic pause.

“Yesterday,” Mustafa is said to have answered.

When Mr. Poilievre asked where the bride-to-be was, Mustafa said she was in Cuba waiting for him with 20 of his best friends.

“This is how everything operates with Justin Trudeau,” Mr. Poilievre says into the camera. “People still waiting 10 months for a passport.”

I have questions. Many others have questions too. But I guess my first one is: Does Mustafa actually exist? Because I have suspicions and I’m not the only one.

After watching Mr. Poilievre’s video, which he posted on Twitter, I put a call out on the social media platform for anyone who had more information on the man named Mustafa. Did anyone know him or know anything about his circumstances? I directed the question to Mr. Poilievre’s office as well. The last time I looked, my tweet had almost 254,000 views and incited the hashtag #whereisMustafa. There was nothing from anyone who could substantiate any part of the story. (Many expressed skepticism about it.) However, plenty of people relayed how quickly they were able to get their passports after applying. Some in less than 10 days.

But let’s assume for the moment Mustafa does exist. My first question to him would be: why would you organize a wedding in Cuba and send your bride-to-be and all your friends there when you didn’t have a passport? I mean, seriously. Many would say Mustafa was pretty dumb to organize a destination wedding when he didn’t have the necessary documents to attend it.

There were avenues he could have explored to expedite the processing time for his application. He could have gone to a passport office, explained his circumstances, and paid extra to get it quicker. He could have contacted his MP. Mostly, he could have said to his fiancée: “You know, we should hold off until I actually have my passport in hand.”

Regardless, it’s a pretty poor example for Mr. Poilievre to be holding up of why “everything is broken in this country.”

It also has echoes of MP Mark Strahl’s infamous constituent “Briane,” the single mom from Chilliwack who the Conservative politician insisted had her bank account frozen over a $50 donation she made to the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. However, the RCMP and the finance ministry cast doubts on the story and Mr. Strahl refused to provide any further details about her identity.

But back to his boss.

At some point Mr. Poilievre needs to begin showing that he is prime ministerial material, that he has the gravitas to ascend to such an important position. Because up to now, he’s been one of the least serious Conservative leaders we have seen in some time.

Yes, he’s articulate and can make a great video. But mostly he’s demonstrated an ability to whip up fear and stoke anger. Every conceivable problem in this country he lays at the feet of Mr. Trudeau. His predecessor, Erin O’Toole, recently said that some of the “hyperaggressive” rhetoric his party has been associated with in the last while is slowly “normalizing rage and damaging our democracy.”

He could have been looking straight into the eyes of Mr. Poilievre when he said it.

There are many things that the Liberal government in Ottawa can and should be criticized for. Its fiscal and monetary policy. Debt. Immigration policy. Our shrinking middle-power status. These are big, heady matters that demand a thoughtful critique, not gimmicky, attention-getting videos that don’t offer solutions but are seemingly designed solely to assign blame and agitate the masses.

Whether Mustafa actually exists is not the question here. The question is why is Pierre Poilievre talking about him in the first place?

Source: We have questions about Pierre Poilievre’s passport story

Filed under Citizenship, Passports Tagged with

Passport Processing: Appears to have turned the corner

2022/10/14 Leave a comment

Latest stats showing the September was the first month that passports issued was greater than applications received. However, no stats on the degree to which service standards on processing time were met:

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/passport/statistics.html

Filed under Passports Tagged with

← Older posts