Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to present a petition from hundreds of residents of the city of Timmins, Ontario, where the issue is the need for passports for travel.
The delays at Passport Canada have caused applicants to part with valuable documents for long periods of time. Passport Canada returns to applicants by mail entire documents and applications due to any number of reasons, such as rejected documents or photographs, causing further unnecessary delay.
The fact is there is no fully operational passport facility or expedited service for the residents of northeastern Ontario. This lack of service is hampering the economic opportunities in our region, which is dependent a great deal on mining. There is a lot of travel back and forth to different countries.
Whereas people in southern Ontario already have fully operational walk-in centres with expedited services, including 24 to 48 hour emergency services, citizens in my region have to drive at least eight to ten hours to get such services. The residents from the Timmins region are calling upon Parliament to approve the granting of a fully operational passport office in the city of Timmins, Ontario to serve the people not just in Timmins, but in all of northeastern Ontario and to alleviate the current workloads and delays we are seeing at Passport Canada.