Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the minister for coming to speak with us today.
I want to speak about the mail-ins and some of the issues that have been coming through my office. Canadians who are waiting definitely feel that there's limited transparency in the process. They have little confidence, because the answers they're getting on the phone are varying, depending on who they call and on which day.
I'm going to talk about one specific case, Minister, because it came to your office this week. It came to me multiple times. My office has been trying to deal with it. There's a family who has been trying to get passports since March and received conflicting information from Service Canada. Finally, the family was told to go to a service centre in Vancouver and pay $145. These are two essential workers who don't have the ability to get away, so this is a problem and a concern.
First of all, can I reach out to your office this week and deal with some of these passport mail-ins that have been in limbo since March, with conflicting answers when our office calls Service Canada?
Also, could you share some transparency for the citizens of Canada about what the process is and what prioritization is? Why have those who mailed in, in March, not seen a passport, some of them, while those who have the ability to get to a service centre seem to be prioritized? Could you provide some transparency around that?