Hours on hold and endless queues: Canadians still grappling with poor passport service
CBC
Canadians routinely wait hours on the phone and in person when dealing with Passport Canada, leaving many travellers infuriated by the quality of the agency's customer service.
Post-COVID chaos at passport offices prompted the federal government to step up and promise a series of changes to get the documents into travellers' hands in a timely manner.
Passport Canada claims that after a prolonged period of pandemic-related delays, the agency has returned to its normal "service standard" of getting passports to most people in 10 or 20 business days, depending on where an application is initially filed.
But the agency's service standard makes no promises about how quickly they will serve people in person or over the phone.
Data and anecdotal reports suggest Passport Canada's customer service track record is poor.
A CBC News analysis of passport office wait times shows people in urban centres often wait several hours to get face-to-face with a customer service agent at Passport Canada-branded offices.
On a weekday morning in mid-March, for example, Passport Canada's website estimated the wait time at its west-end Ottawa location at 2 hours and 45 minutes.
In downtown Toronto that month, would-be passport holders faced a three-hour wait to get to the front of the line before noon.
The wait times in late April were much the same: people in Mississauga, Ont. were being told then they'd have to wait about 2 hours and 45 minutes to be served if they were on site at 9:30 a.m. There was a bright spot in Halifax — there the wait was only an hour.
On Monday, prospective passport holders in Brampton, Ont. faced a nearly three-hour wait shortly after that city's office opened, according to Passport Canada data published online.
At Calgary's Sunpark Drive location, travellers were told it would be at least three hours before they could speak to somebody after it opened its doors for the day, online data shows.
Debbie Braun is a retiree who lives in High River, Alta., less than an hour south of Calgary.
She told CBC News that the prospect of those long in-person wait times led her to skip the drive into the city and send her passport application by mail in February.
And given Passport Canada's commitment to process the vast majority of mail-in applications "within 20 days," Braun thought she'd have her hands on a renewed passport well before her Mexican vacation in April.
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