Mr. Speaker, tonight's adjournment proceedings arise from a question I asked on October 29 regarding the crisis of passport applications mailed in for processing.
Last February, the former foreign affairs minister told us that 500 new passport employees had been hired, that capacity had increased by 40%, and that the matter was in hand.
In June the foreign minister assured the House that his government would see that passports were produced in a timely and efficient way. It seems that these assurances have gone the same way as income trusts and health wait times promises.
Right now, in anticipation of the busiest foreign travel season in some time, the booming Canadian dollar and the looming passport requirements at the Canada-U.S. borders, incredibly there is still a growing backlog and an admitted minimum six week delay to receive mail-in passports when the benchmark is four weeks. In fact, the reality is several months or longer. Two out of these three factors were known months in advance and still Canadians must suffer the consequences of poor planning.
Last January, the Auditor General specifically singled out the Conservatives because they had no plan to deal with the demand for passports. It appears they still have no plan and Canadians are the ones who are paying the price in cancelled trips and sheer frustration.
As a member of Parliament, my staff and I are on the receiving end of the irate calls from constituents who have to cancel, sometimes at great expense, business and personal trips after waiting months in vain for their passports.
In one case, two families sent in their applications at the same time because they planned to travel to Mexico together. After three months, only one family's applications were processed. The other family was told that their applications may be in a pile of unopened applications. Since the original birth certificates were in the unopened passport applications, their only option in order to travel to Mexico the following week was to go to Toronto and reapply for birth certificates that allowed admission to that country.
Last June, another constituent had to purchase a new birth certificate and reapply in person at the St. Catharines Passport Office because his mail-in application, that was submitted six weeks previously, was also not yet opened, let alone considered. At that time, the passport office informed us that it was currently working on applications received eight to twelve weeks prior.
These stories are not the fault of the overextended staff, only the fault of the government in not providing the extra resources that they need to keep up to the level of service expected.
In Niagara, the looming deadline of the western hemisphere travel initiative at our land border crossings is causing an additional strain on both our local passport office and the mail-in resources. On January 31, 2008, all Canadians entering the United States at a land border crossing must have a valid passport, a measure that disproportionately affects those who live in border communities such as Niagara.
For those of us who live adjacent to the border, the reality is that we move frequently and seamlessly between the two countries for work, cultural and sporting events, attending church or visiting family and friends. The pressure of this January 31, 2008, deadline is going to result in an ongoing increase of applications for the foreseeable future.
When is this government going to get control of this situation?