When's the right time to apply for a Canadian passport? Your questions answered as delays persist

Aiden Ho, 7, and his brother Desmond, 5, would be on their way to Hong Kong to visit their grandmother if only their mother, Janice Ip, could get their passports processed.

Ip says she's been searching online for a month for an appointment at Service Canada centres and passport offices but hasn't found one within a 50-kilometre radius of her home in Aurora, Ont.

"I kind of don't trust the system at the moment, but what can I do?" she said. "It's kind of a wait-and-see situation."

Ip is one of many Canadians weighing the odds of committing to travelling while Service Canada slogs through an overwhelming demand for passports since pandemic restrictions were relaxed, forcing thousands to wait in line at centres across the country.

She says she won't risk losing her family's personal documents in the mail to apply for passports — or spend money on plane tickets she might not be able to use.

And taking a day off from work to line up isn't an option.

"We actually do not have the luxury of waiting in line just because of the nature of our work. We are not able to work from home," she said.

CBC News asked Families Minister Karina Gould, the minister responsible for passport services, how Canadians should approach passport applications in the upcoming weeks.

You're better off not mailing your passport application for the time being because of the "huge backlog," Gould said.

"For some people, mail is the only option, and we want to make sure that channel is available to them, but the passport system is really designed as an in-person service," she said.

Gould added that going in-person allows officers to review personal documents required for passport applications, such as birth certificates and citizen cards, and return them immediately.

Canadians have complained about being unable to reach Service Canada phone operators, after waiting for hours, only to hear an automated message that hangs up on them. "Sometimes your cell phone provider, if you've been on hold for a period of time, will drop the call … And that's not actually because of the government of Canada's system, because we take all of those calls on," Gould said.

A spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) says 135 officers currently work at the passport call centre, and an additional 40 officers from 1-800-O-CANADA — the general phone line for information on federal government services — provide support. Service Canada put in place a system in mid-April that plays a message when the lines are full instead of a busy signal or dropping calls right away. Before then, callers would be disconnected automatically when lines were busy.  The government agency received 949,921 calls between July 4 and July 10.

Gould says Service Canada expects 500 more passport officers to get to work — and 383 citizen service officers who can support them in the passport process — by the end of July.