Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you very much, Minister, for being here today.
Minister, you addressed the foreseen demands, but the increase in demand for passport renewals should have been easy for the government to predict, as more Canadians needed to update their travel documents. Further, this is the 10-year anniversary of implementing the 10-year passport. A predictable increase in demand was foreseeable.
You talked about some performance measures. Between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, Service Canada issued 363,000 passports, yet in the same time frame the following year, 1,273,000 passports were issued. This number is still down from the 2.3 million processed between April 2019 and March 2020. Canadians rightfully expect to be able to get basic government services such as passports from the Government of Canada.
Minister, when we look to the media, we see many horror stories, frankly, from Canadians. I have a May 24 story here from Global News. It states:
A B.C. family said they had to shell out $3,000 for a new flight for their family vacation after they didn’t receive all their passports on time.
[Ms.] Ventouras said her family has been trying to plan a trip for a while to go to Orlando, Fla., with [her] niece and nephew.
She said they had let the children’s passports expire during COVID so in February they went in person to apply at the passport office and were told they would receive their passports in the mail by...April or [even] sooner.
Unfortunately, Minister, this states:
They didn’t arrive.
“My husband went. The week we were supposed to leave, he went to Passport Canada,” she said. “We got new passport applications in case they could do an emergency one. He was told we couldn’t get an emergency passport at that time.”
The office...requested the documents be sent to the Service Canada office in Surrey but they could not guarantee that the passports were going to arrive on time.
The week they were supposed to leave, the passports still had not come so...they made the decision to change the flight to leave from Seattle—
This of course also hurts our economy. It continues:
—as children do not need passports to fly within the United States.
The cost of buying new flights on Delta Airlines was $3,000.
[Ms. Ventouras] said Service Canada told her staff are doing the best they can....
We recognize this.
The family also couldn’t claim a flight change refund through travel insurance.
“When there was no responsibility, that was the frustrating part,” she said.
Minister, I have another story. It's about a family who tried to go to Disneyland on a trip for a woman with terminal cancer. Unfortunately, after a passport delay it was put off for some time. The article states:
Ask Barb Walter's family, and they'll tell you the 56-year-old grandmother would give anything for her loved ones.
But since they found out she has terminal cancer, the family said they have been scrambling to give back to her with a trip to Disneyland in California.
They said they want to make the trip as a family so Walter can make lasting memories with her three beloved grandchildren.
I know that as a mother you will appreciate this. It says:
“This could very well be [the] last thing that she gets to do with us as a family while she's still in any capacity to be able to leave the house,” said Brandon Williams, 42, Walter's son-in-law and the father of her grandchildren, speaking from [the] family's home in Hope.
“She wanted to take the family to Disneyland and make this trip happen any way possible. Part of her bucket list.”
But the trip is in question, Brandon said, because of delays getting the kids their passports.
Williams' wife and Walter's step-daughter, Cheyenne Williams, applied in late April for passports for their three kids, ages three to seven—as soon as they found out....
It says, that they applied by priority mail in the Lower Mainland, and their flight from Vancouver to California is set for June 3. I hope they can make that flight.
Unfortunately, we are now seeing this extend into other services, as reported in a May 25 Global News article:
Backlogs and bottlenecks in passport processing through Service Canada appear to be causing problems for clients seeking other core services through the facilities, such as death benefits or employment insurance.
Minister, I looked at the dates of the announcements of the travel restrictions—the ones that should have been lifted—being lifted. On February 15 it was announced that on February 28, fully vaccinated individuals only had to produce antigen tests. April 1 was announced on March 17.
Minister, you had announcements this year regarding day care on March 28 for Ontario and March 31 for Nova Scotia, yet the first article, Minister, came out March 8 on these passport delays, which tells me you didn't prioritize these passports or these Service Canada services, due to your day care initiative. You should have taken care of these Canadians first before you continued this initiative. You should have made the difference in your prioritization.
As a result of that, Ms. Walters may not get to go to Disneyland with her family. The Ventouras family won't be able to go on its bucket list trip without paying another $3,000, Minister.
I wish you would have prioritized things differently as a minister. As I mentioned, in the May 25 article, we are now seeing these passport bottlenecks spilling over to EI and CPP applicants, which has significant effects on our Canadian society.
Thank you.