Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this adjournment debate and to express my concerns regarding the problem of delays in processing passports. Canadians must now wait months, sometimes even more than three months, before receiving their travel documents because of the lack of action by the Conservative government.
On February 13, the Minister of Foreign Affairs told the House of Commons that 500 new employees had been hired by Passport Canada to deal with the backlog at passport offices. But on April 23— more than two months later—he stated that he hoped “to have them all on stream very soon”.
The minister's statement clearly indicated that absolutely nothing had been done. On May 3, the minister admitted that the employees were still in training. We must take action now to provide service to our citizens. Thousands of Canadians, if not millions, have waited months and months to obtain a passport and continue to line up for days on end to submit their applications.
The number of applications continues to grow. In December 2006, Passport Canada had already received 31% more applications than the year before. In addition, Passport Canada's toll-free line is rarely available because of this increase. Normally, the telephone information system can manage 25,000 calls per week, but the agency is currently receiving 140,000 calls. Demand for passports is increasing because of the new American policy that requires Canadians to show a passport to enter the United States.
We have known this new law would be implemented since April 2005. At the time, the Liberal government put in place an awareness-raising strategy through the Department of Foreign Affairs. Obviously, the Conservatives dropped the ball when they took power. They waited until April 2007 to train new employees to try to fix the situation. They even left it up to the provincial governments to negotiate with Washington. In February 2007, the premiers of New Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba went to Washington to convince American authorities to relax their new rules requiring Canadians to show a passport to enter the United States by land or water.
The premiers are suggesting that an improved driver's licence could be used instead of a Canadian passport. While I fully support the measures taken by the provincial governments, I continue to wonder why they had to take action in this matter, which is clearly a federal jurisdiction. The Conservative government lacks leadership and refuses to take action in this matter, leaving the problem with the provinces, individuals, and citizens of the country.
Today we clearly need to know. Will the minister responsible for Passport Canada admit that the problem, and resulting delays in receiving one's passport, is solely and directly his fault? It is clear that the minister has not done his job. For a number of months—let us say 16 months—he has been aware of the problem. We are still waiting for the minister to take clear action for the Canadian public, but we have a government that wants to do absolutely nothing to help the public and just contradicts itself from one month to the next. Will the minister agree today to take full responsibility for the problem of delays at Passport Canada?