Winnipeggers waiting hours outside passport office

Long lines for passport renewals in Winnipeg A surge in the number of people across the country applying for or renewing a Canadian passport is causing a massive backlog and long lines.

Anyone hoping to visit the passport office in Winnipeg will likely be faced with long lines.

Images from outside the Service Canada Centre on Monday morning show a long lineup of people waiting outside the building on Main Street.

Norbert Jeanson told CTV News Winnipeg he’d been waiting outside the office for about an hour on Monday. He was there to apply for a passport to have surgery in the United States.

He said he didn’t know what to expect in terms of the lineup, but was surprised when he got there.

“This is a lot longer than the first time I was here, which was a few weeks ago,” he said.

Marlos Arantes was also waiting outside the passport office on Monday. He was there to get a passport for his daughter.

Arantes said he had been waiting in line for almost two hours.

He noted he’s been trying for months to get his daughter’s passport, but with no luck so far.

“My wife and I, we were planning this trip for a long time, and now we might not go because the baby has no document for crossing the border,” he said.

Arantes said the government needs a better plan, and should not be accepting passport requests if it doesn’t have the capacity to handle the demand.

- With files from CTV’s Owen Swinn.