Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to participate in today's debate. It allows me to follow up on a question I asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs on the whole issue of the deplorable situation faced by a number of my constituents as well as those in many other ridings. There is no doubt about it.
As I indicated on April 23, the government is incapable of providing “adequate“ services. The word is deliberately chosen. We are not asking for the level of service to be outstanding, only fair and adequate. Simple passport applications and renewal applications are taking more time to process with each passing day. Canadian and Quebeckers who wish to travel are losing both time and money. Rural citizens—like those from my riding and many others—are at a particular disadvantage.
I asked the minister if he knew about this and if he was ready to commit to establishing a passport office for the Gaspé Peninsula and Lower St. Lawrence region. He answered by admitting that the situation was difficult. He spoke of 58 new Service Canada offices—and I will have something to say later on this topic—and of 500 new employees. I have something to say on this topic also, since they should be at work already but they are not. All this was done, as he said, “to address the bottleneck”.
Lastly, I did not appreciate at all, as some of my constituents, his call for patience. Patience is not what we need in my region, nor in other regions, in Neigette, Témiscouata and Les Basques. What we want is equity in services and adequate services from his department. We have already proven that we can be patient. We are ultra-patient, but there are limits.
The minister had the gall to mention Service Canada. In case he does not know, let me tell him: in Rimouski and in the Lower St. Lawrence, Service Canada offers no passport services whatsoever. In my office, my associates and I work diligently to help the citizens of my riding, and even those from other ridings that come to Rimouski for business. They come to the office of a member of Parliament. It is my pleasure to help them. That is what we are there for. However, the turnaround time is completely unacceptable. Let me give a few very simple examples.
The service called the MP Desk, where the turnaround time is two and a half months, does not include rejected passport photos, which can drive the turnaround time up by several weeks. In those cases, we have to inform Passport Canada to expedite the process. We must not forget that, when people do not include the amounts required and send everything by regular mail, the bags of regular mail are not even opened. Furthermore, there is no way of making sure that the letter was even received. Things are even worse when there is a receipt. We have learned—and this takes the cake—that Canada Post employees do not even have time to sign for the registered mail or priority post. That is extremely serious. The Canada Post CEO is investigating the matter.
The service given to MPs by phone and email is totally inadequate. Answers are vague and often inaccurate. I will give you four quick examples. We sent an email for an urgent request for example and only received an answer two weeks later. What a way to treat an urgent request! It also frequently happens that our calls are not returned, even if we have left a message saying that it was urgent. No call whatsoever. Officials at Passport Canada give us information on the status of a file, and a few days later we learn that the state of this file is completely—