Gould says passport application backlog 'completely eliminated', announces online status checker

Passport backlog 'completely eliminated': Gould Minister Karina Gould says Canada’s passport application backlog has been 'completely eliminated' after last summer's long wait times.

Canada’s passport application backlog has been ‘completely eliminated,’ according to the minister responsible for the file.

Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould said Tuesday that service times for passport applications are back to pre-pandemic standards, after the backlog ballooned last summer.

Canadians saw extensive wait times — both outside passport offices and to receive the documentation itself — over the summer months, which officials chalked up to a spike in demand for travel as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions eased.

After many Canadians experienced months-long delays, the service time for applications delivered in person at specialized passport offices is now 10 business days, while mail-in and Service Canada location applications take an average of 20 business days.

Gould had announced in January the application backlog had been “virtually eliminated,” and that 98 per cent of applications had been processed. Of the remaining backlog at that time, some of the applications were “quite complex to process,” and in some cases resulted in no passport being issued, Gould said Tuesday.

“Regardless of the situation, Service Canada staff have continued to drive that number down, and today it is completely eliminated,” she said.

Gould said Tuesday the capacity to process applications has nearly doubled in the last year — with Service Canada nearly doubling its staff in that time, plus adding new service centres — and she guarantees Canadians will be able to get their passports on time for any surge in travel plans this summer.

“What is different today from where we were a year ago is we have more capacity in the system,” Gould told reporters in French.

She added her department has been working to streamline the system overall, after the Liberal government was heavily criticized last year by the opposition for failing to deliver certain services, namely timely passports and air travel.

“Obviously there was a challenge and an issue with passports through the spring and summer of last year. I mean, that's clear,” Gould said. “But what I would say is that we took real action to fix it. And what Canadians can be assured of now, and the experience of Canadians in getting their passports, has changed.”

Gould also announced a new digital tool to check the status of an application online, and said the added capacity at Service Canada will ensure it’s ready to handle another surge in requests when the first wave of 10-year passports expire this summer.

“I found it hard to believe that you could track your package through Canada Post or through Amazon, but we didn't have that same opportunity for passports,” she said. “It was something that became abundantly clear and it's a big lesson learned from the situation where we were a year ago.”

Gould called the new tool a “first step in having more digital options,” and said she hopes to be able to announce online passport renewal applications soon. She wouldn’t specify how soon that might be, but added it would be “soon in government terms.”

With files from CTVNews.ca’s Senior Digital Parliamentary Reporter Rachel Aiello