First of all, the big challenge was the very quick change from travel restrictions to lifting travel restrictions. Understandably, that meant thousands of Canadians wanted to travel. They had done the right things for two years. They had stayed home. They had made sure they were protecting themselves and protecting their loved ones.
When the travel restrictions were lifted, there was a clear desire to get out and see the world after that difficult time. That meant that we went from getting about 120,000 applications a month in the year prior to getting over 250,000 as of March 2022. That number was sustained over that period of time. Hindsight is obviously 20/20. Had we known three or six months in advance when travel restrictions would be lifted, absolutely, yes, we would have been able to hire those additional 1,200 people.
We knew there was going to be an increase in travel. If we take ourselves back to February 2022, the vast majority of the country was in lockdown. There was the omicron outbreak. The country wasn't thinking about travelling. When those restrictions were lifted, people wanted to get out, so we did start hiring folks in January. At that time, it would take about three months to train a passport officer, so we only started to see the benefit of those trained passport officers later in the spring. It was insufficient for the volume we received. Passport applications are very integrity-intensive in the sense that we have to make sure they are connected to the right people.
There were two other things that happened that were factors that led to the situation we saw in Canada in the spring.
First, we had about 80% of applications come in by mail, as opposed to in-person passport applications. That's the reverse of the prepandemic norm, when it was about 80% in person and 20% by mail. We're close to that ratio now. Processing by mail is a lot less efficient, because about 25% of applications are incomplete, and having to call someone to verify information, etc., takes additional time.
There are two other points to that. One, we saw a huge increase in applications for children's passports. About 50% were applications for children, and those are more integrity-intensive.
The other thing was that about 80%-85% of the applications were for new passports, for first-time passport holders, as opposed to renewals. Renewals are much simpler. We have information in the system. It's a quicker process to go through. When you have to deal with new passports, it takes a lot more time to establish the identity. Of course, we just didn't have the staff to respond, particularly to the mail-in system.
