Bridging the gap between service standards for walk-in offices and mail-in applications is being reduced in the sense that passports are being processed within ten days if you go to a walk-in office and passports are being processed within twenty days if you apply by mail. Right now, the service standard for both walk-in and mail-in is exactly the same because we have beefed up our capacity to respond to mail-in applications.
When it comes to urgent service in the regions, we are in the process, as Ms. Thomas was saying, of working with Service Canada on the expansion of services that Service Canada would provide. The challenge we face with urgent passport applications is that our policy requires people to apply in person. It would be too easy for someone to walk into an office and say “I need a passport urgently, so waive all the security checks and get me my passport because I have to move forward”. Hence the requirement for people to appear in person, and also, hence the reason why MPs, not being part of the federal public service, do not have the authority basically to authenticate a person. If they did, what would happen if there was a mistake? There would be an issue of accountability between your office and our office and so forth.
What we would like to do with Service Canada, and we're in the process of working on it with them, is to allow them basically to authenticate the documents. First of all, if they were to authenticate a document and ship an application to us quickly, either by fax or e-mail, we would be in a position to process much more quickly. We also have an arrangement with CBSA through which people can go to an airport as they fly out, get their passport at the airport, have the CBSA officer confirm the identity and then have people move on.
It's not the perfect fit, and we're aware of that, but we hope that as we develop a closer partnership with Service Canada we'll be in a position to use their services more extensively.