Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for his advocacy on behalf of his constituents.
I think everyone in this place can agree that a passport is an important and critical document. We know that Canadians are enthusiastic about travelling again, whether for business or personal reasons, and that passports are critical, so we can imagine the demand. Let me just say that it has been exponential. I will share some numbers for some important context.
Service Canada has been issuing passports as quickly as possible, and since April 1, over one million passports have been issued. As of September 25, 94% of passports applied for at specialized passport offices have been issued within 10 business days. The wait time at the passport call centre went from a peak of 108 minutes in April to 30 minutes last week. Service Canada has been working throughout the summer to meet this demand.
Staff at Service Canada have been working overtime and on weekends, and here are some of the steps that we have taken. We have hired more than 800 new employees since July 2021, specifically to support the processing of passport applications, and we are continuing to scale-up. We have an online appointment booking tool. We are serving priority clients on Saturdays and extending service hours. We improved client experience in our offices by thoroughly assessing client needs while in line, providing clients with appointments at a nearby location and expanding hours and weekend availability in some locations. As a result, lineups at specialized passport offices are now more manageable and more predictable.
Canadians can visit any of over 300 Service Canada centres to request the transfer of their passport applications if they need it for urgent and upcoming travel. This summer, Service Canada has implemented a triage system in 17 of our passport offices. The 10-day passport pickup service is also available in 12 Service Canada centres across the country. We have expanded the simplified renewal process. Canadians can now renew an expired passport as long as it was issued in the last 15 years, even if it was lost, stolen or damaged. We are continuing to hire employees and add processing capacity.
This remains a challenging period with high demand, but we continue to work hard to give Canadians the high-quality service they deserve.