Hours-long wait times have returned to passport offices as the Canada Post strike halts mail delivery of travel documents.
Service Canada reports that close to 200,000 completed passports are waiting to be mailed out to their owners. It cautions that some folks who applied recently may have their documents stuck in postal sorting centres.
Daily Hive visited the Passport Canada office at the Sinclair Centre in downtown Vancouver Monday to find two lines snaking around the lobby. One was for dropping off passport applications, and the second was for picking up completed passports. Both spilled into the lobby, with security guards controlling how many people entered the office at a time.
For someone arriving at 11 am, it took about two hours of waiting in the lobby to get into the office. Folks were given a ticket once inside and told there was an estimated 2.5-hour wait from there.
Staff at the passport office said the line for pickups was “unprecedented” and encouraged those submitting applications to think about whether they needed their passport urgently — and if they could come back another day in January.
Many people were visiting the office to update their application to in-person pickup to avoid it being held for weeks during the postal strike. Canadians can typically mail in a passport application and receive the document at their home. But that hassle-free option isn’t currently available.
Service Canada stopped mailing out passport packages on November 8 in anticipation of the November 15 strike. It’s holding those completed passports for distribution once mail carriers return to work.
As of December 1, about 185,000 passports have been printed and are being held by Service Canada.
Folks can also go in person to request a change to their file, and several people at the Vancouver Passport Office on December 9 were doing exactly that. Service Canada will transfer a completed passport to one of 60 Service Canada locations as long as clients pay the pickup fee of $20 and a $45 transfer fee.
Daily Hive asked if Service Canada would consider waiving the fees given the postal strike, but a spokesperson did not answer the question directly.
So far, 6,500 of the completed passports have been transferred for pickup at Service Canada.
“Passport offices may not be able to respond to requests on a first-come, first-served basis due to a high volume of requests and are therefore contacting clients based on the date of travel or need,” a spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada, which manages Service Canada, told Daily Hive via email.
Folks without urgent travel dates can still submit their passport application via a courier service to avoid in-person lines. Service Canada locations can also process passport applications — though passport renewal is slower than at a passport office.
But folks who mailed their passport application right before the labour disruption may have to wait longer since Service Canada won’t have received their package and won’t be able to start processing it until mail service resumes.
Employment and Social Development Canada noted it’s experiencing long wait times at some locations but that it can vary across the country.
“During seasonal peaks, wait times vary from one office to another across the country. Some regions may see higher demand for passport services than others, based on common travel times. For example, spring break is not the same in all regions, which can lead to longer wait times in some offices,” the spokesperson said.
Service Canada posts wait times for passport offices online. These wait times only start from the time a client receives a ticket — they don’t account for the hours waiting outside an office to be granted entry.
Meanwhile, the Canada Post strike has stretched nearly a month, with no signs of being resolved soon. Canada Post said Wednesday that the union’s latest proposal isn’t affordable for Canadians, adding “billions of dollars in long-term fixed costs.”
The union’s latest proposal included a 19% wage hike for workers over four years, including a 9% increase in the first year. The employer wants to focus on modernizing its business model in the face of a difficult financial situation. Since 2018, the Crown corporation has sustained more than $3 billion in operational losses.
“While we recognize that CUPW has moved on its wage demands, the union’s proposal remains well beyond what the Corporation can afford, given its significant losses and deteriorating financial position,” Canada post said in a news release.
Service Canada has been dealing with long lines ever since the COVID-19 pandemic when workers were laid off, and travel paused. When things reopened, the short-staffed offices were met with a wave of pent-up travel demand. In 2022, people even charged hundreds of dollars to hold others’ spots in line outside passport offices.
Canada was supposed to introduce an online renewal option, but earlier this year, it said the new service had been delayed.
Are you dealing with passport headaches amid the Canada Post strike? Email us at [email protected]