Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to rise to present two petitions signed by hundreds of people in northern Ontario concerning the need and desire in our region to actually have adequate passport services.
As we know, we have had major passport issues with backlogs right across the country, but in northeastern Ontario we are challenged because we have no walk-in passport facilities anywhere. We have people who have to often travel 12 hours by bus to get walk-in passport service.
The petitioners call upon the federal government to work to develop a walk-in passport service for northeastern Ontario, like other regions in the country are able to have, so that people in our part of this country, and it would service also possibly people from northwestern Quebec, can get walk-in passport services on a need basis.
I am very pleased to bring forward those two petitions today.