It’s 8:02 a.m. The passport office doesn’t open for another 28 minutes but there are already 20 people in a line that stretches into the Bay Centre’s fourth-floor food court.
Fifteenth in the queue is Liz Nokes. She needs her passport renewed soon, is due to fly to Switzerland in 16 days to meet her PhD-student daughter, but when she tried to make an appointment at the office, she found she was too late. “They’re booked way into December.”
So here she is in line with the other walk-ins, hoping to get through the glass doors before they say sorry, there’s no more room today — something that often happens by mid-morning.
That’s what happened to Yolanda Bodine when she showed up the previous day and was told the Service Canada office could handle no more clients. “When he said that yesterday, I was devastated.”
Just ahead of Nokes in the line, Bodine is a dual citizen who lives in California. She’s only in Victoria for a couple of days, and is keen to renew her expired Canadian passport. She could do so by mail, but the last time she did that, it took a couple of months.
Why are people flocking to Victoria’s passport office? Because after almost two years of hunkering in their bunkers, and even with Omicron entering the lexicon, they’re starting to travel again.
Passport services for those who needed them urgently were available throughout the first year of the pandemic, but with international travel heavily restricted, there wasn’t much demand.
Service Canada processed 2.3 million passports in the year before the world slammed its doors, but just 363,000 in the 12 months from April 2020 to March 2021. Now the numbers are heading north again, with 591,000 passports issued in the seven months from April 1 through Halloween.
That’s still well short of the pre-pandemic output, though note that the end of October is also when, with the U.S. preparing to lift the gates to vaccinated Canadians at land borders, Ottawa warned that it expected numbers to ramp up: “As travel restrictions are lifted, Service Canada is preparing for an increase in demand for passport services,” read a statement posted by Employment and Social Development Canada.
The department says it is meeting its goal of handling applications within 10 or 20 business days, depending on how you apply. “The average processing time is currently four days for clients applying in person and 14 days for the mail-in channel,” the department said this week.
That means Canada compares nicely to some other countries. “Passport delivery ‘meltdown’ puts Christmas travel at risk,” warned Thursday’s headline in The Times in Britain, where authorities warned of 10-week processing times, compounded by delays due to an overwhelmed courier service.
At the end of October, the U.S. State Department said the processing time for routine passport applications was eight to 11 weeks. Americans are being advised to apply at least four to six months before they plan to travel.
So, we’re in relatively good shape. Still, as Victorians are finding out, don’t assume you can waltz straight into the passport office. For one thing, physical-distancing rules mean they’re still not using their waiting area. And since 2019, it has been a Service Canada office, dealing not just with passports but other federally administered matters, too. There’s only so much capacity at the site. (Note that you can apply for a passport at any Service Canada location.)
The current situation is a little reminiscent of the post 9/11 years, when Canadians long-used to crossing into the U.S. on the strength of nothing more than a birth certificate and driver’s licence (I once got into Mexico by flashing a Blockbuster Video card) found such documents were no longer good enough.
With demand more than doubling, long lines of rain-drenched applicants snaked down from the passport office on Fort Street. Some of those waiting paid homeless people to hold their place in a queue that could last for hours. The crunch only eased after the current passport office opened in the Bay Centre in May 2009 and capacity was added nationwide.
Service Canada urges those whose travel isn’t imminent to apply for passports by mail. It says those who need to come into the office had best book ahead. Use the department’s online form and someone will call within a couple of business days to arrange your appointment, with priority given to those whose travel deadlines are tightest.
As for walk-ins, it’s like B.C. Ferries: if you don’t reserve, you take your chances.
jknox@timescolonist.com
