Matt Gurney: My kids needed new passports. I'm glad I brought a chair

Not all travel is tourism. Not all trips are fun. Canadians have a right to travel. The government must fix this dysfunction.

The waiting room of the Passport Canada office on Victoria Street in Toronto. Photo by Matt Gurney.

At least this time, the #MakeMattSuffer series of reports my co-editor Jen Gerson is far-too-gleeful to have conceived of actually served a purpose beyond my suffering. When I flew to New York City two weeks ago to experience the dysfunction of air travel circa 2022, the entire purpose of the trip was the trip itself. When I lined up outside a Passport Canada office in downtown Toronto on Tuesday, I was there for the journalism, sure, but I was also there for the passports.

Both of my children need new ones.

The passport dysfunction is an interesting story, because it's a smaller one. Disruptions to air travel in Canada and around the world are complicated affairs. Air travel is nothing if not the butterfly effect in action. A late flight can cause ripple effects that result in other flights being cancelled a day later and a continent away. Staffing shortages among one group of airport employee can cause human bottlenecks that grind an airport to a halt, even if the bottlenecks do not appear in any way directly linked to where the problem actually began.

Passports aren’t like that.

They are completely within federal responsibility. It is entirely up to the government of the day to get this right, or wrong. 

And it really isn’t all that complicated. Countries have been issuing passports for centuries. I’m probably on my fifth or sixth by now. If there are major problems in our passport service, that lands entirely at the feet of the Trudeau government. We have a federal government right now that is not particularly fond of admitting when it has screwed up, but this is a case where they are screwing up. They need to do better.

But first, let me tell you what I saw and experienced. There was good, but there was lots of bad. And numbers, I think, speak for themselves.

Our children being under the age of 16, cannot renew passports, and must apply for a new one each time. Their passports can only last five years. (This makes sense. The photo we took of our son when he was two doesn’t look anything like a photo of our boy on the cusp of eight, and would be even more out of date when he was 12.) We are planning to travel this summer. Besides, we want to have updated copies of our passports on hand, simply because it feels irresponsible to not have them. My son's expired weeks ago. My daughter's expires next week. 

Passports can be issued to the general public in three ways. They can be issued in days or even hours in certain emergency circumstances, at a Passport Canada office. (More on that later.) They can be issued on an express basis for urgent but non-emergency purposes in a matter of weeks or days. Those who have no particular urgency in their efforts can mail in their application and receive their new document back by mail. Traditionally, this has taken a few weeks. I’ve done this before, and experienced no problems. Currently, however, backlogs are creating delays of multiple months, and many people are reporting sending in their forms and not hearing back anything at all.

This is a problem. If applying for a non-emergency and non-express passport by mail, you have to send your old passport back before they’ll issue you the new one. I used to be happy to roll the dice and mail my old one away, figuring I would not need it anytime in the next two or three weeks — the old expected turnaround time. But when that becomes an indefinite period of many months, the game changes. I’m hoping to travel this summer. You never know when work or personal emergencies may require one to travel urgently. I don’t want to send my vital transportation document off into the void of federal bureaucracy and hope to get it back around Thanksgiving … or maybe Christmas. That’s just not a reasonable thing for the government to ask us to tolerate.

So I went downtown. 

I filled out the forms at home the night before; an old friend from high school who lives in the neighborhood signed them, to vouch for my identity, and signed my children’s photos, as well. My wife dug out their birth certificates and their expired/expiring passports. I put everything into neatly organized Ziploc bags — an alarming amount of my life is organized using differently sized sandwich baggies — and threw them into a backpack along with my laptop, a gigantic bottle of water, a phone charger pack and some headphones. I knew that it was likely to be a long day. And that’s why I brought along a folding chair, too.

I could have left before sunrise and gotten myself into line first thing. But that felt a bit like cheating. Even though I did need the passports, I also knew full well that I was going to write a report about what I experienced, and I didn’t think it would be fair or accurate to behave in a way that many members of the general public could not. Besides, I wanted to sleep past 5:30 in the damn morning, thank you very much. So on Tuesday, after my kids were dropped off at school as per normal, I threw the chair and backpack into my trunk and drove downtown to the Passport Canada office on Victoria Street. It took 20 minutes to get there, another five or so to park, and as I joined the line for the office, which already wrapped around the corner of Victoria onto Richmond Street, I marked the time. It was 8:48 in the morning. 

The line outside the Victoria Street Passport Canada office shortly after we were divided into two lines. Note that we are still comfortably shaded by the skyline.

It was at least a beautiful morning, at first. It was 21°C with clear blue skies above. The sun was mercifully hidden behind the Toronto skyline, and the first hour spent sitting on the sidewalk, dragging my chair forward a few feet at a time every half hour or so, was about as pleasant as it could be. I listened to music. Finished an audiobook. Polished and filed a column for my editors at TVO.org. I also casually chatted with some of the other people in line. The family behind me were hoping to go back and visit their family in India this summer. The woman ahead of me, who was there to get a new passport for her young daughter, was also planning to travel overseas with her child to visit family, and had driven four hours the night before from Sudbury, Ontario to be here.

Thus far, all was well and very civilized. A nice young man walked up and down the street with a big box of Tim Hortons donuts, offering them for free for those who were waiting. I did not see anyone take a donut, and the man seemed somewhat disappointed by this. (As a rule, I do not encourage anyone to take baked goods off any random person on a downtown street, but I maybe could have been convinced to take a bagel. Sweets aren't my weakness.)

Things got less pleasant around 10 o’clock in the morning. The line had advanced maybe 100 feet by then. At first, it had been a few feet at a time, but then, there was a sudden forward movement of many dozens of feet. Exciting! Was this a sign that the line was moving fast that day? No such luck, I’m afraid. What had happened instead was that passport office staff had begun dividing the line into two. Those who were there to submit entirely new applications lined up outside the building headed north. Those who were there to deal with a passport application that had already been filed lined up to the south. The illusion of movement soon settled into a complete holding pattern — no one was getting inside, we were just in different lines now.

And then the sun, man's greatest nemesis, rose up above the skyline and began radiating down on us. The temperature climbed steadily. I hate heat, and had dressed appropriately, knowing it would get unpleasant. Many of the people in line with me, including the mom who'd driven down from Sudbury, were not at all dressed to stand in the sun baking. But that’s exactly what we had to do. I told the woman that she could go find a shady spot and I would happily let her in the line ahead of me when she returned. She gratefully accepted and found herself a spot under a nearby tree.

After about an hour of broiling under my hat in the unmoving line, sipping water and wishing I had thought to bring sunscreen, more staff from Passport Canada came out and began to work their way down our line. They wanted to see everyone’s documents before they would even consider letting us into the building. Anyone who passed the document check got a ticket. Anyone who didn’t was told to leave the line. Quite a few people failed to get one of the coveted tickets. It was genuinely sad to see. The overdressed woman in front of me, sadly, did not pass scrutiny. She was not able to show any documents demonstrating a specific day of travel. In the absence of a confirmed travel plan, she was not eligible for expedited service, and was told to mail in her daughter's passport application instead.

She was very upset, and protested, entirely accurately, that the government's own webpages are urging Canadians not to book trips or make any travel plans until they have new travel documents. Hell, the application document itself says so, in black and white: "It is recommended that you do not finalize travel plans until you receive the requested passport." Meanwhile, the government won't expedite the service of anyone who does not have confirmed travel plans. It’s an absurd contradiction, a typical example of hamfisted government comms. The woman, despite being very emotional, maintained a pleasant and respectful demeanour when speaking with the staff, and asked the man reviewing her documents how she was supposed to interpret, “Don’t book a trip until you have a passport, and don’t apply for a passport unless you have a booked trip.“ He uncomfortably shuffled his feet a few times, shrugged, and told her only, “We are asking people not to travel right now. We want everyone to avoid travel."

That was certainly true early in the pandemic, and, well, of course it was. COVID-19 was a novel, mysterious threat, and vaccines were many months of scientific labour and production away. Advising against travel made sense then. We aren’t in that situation anymore. The world has basically re-opened. Even our own federal government has begun to lower the pandemic-related barriers to travel. This man was undoubtedly speaking the truth when he said the government would prefer we not travel right now. That would make it a lot easier for them to get caught up on the passport backlog. This is, to put it mildly, not exactly the same thing as urging no travel because of the risk of a plague.

But they were asking anyway, and that poor mom left the line in tears.

It was my turn next. My documents were basically in order. The woman who reviewed mine asked me to fill in a box or two on my printed forms and carefully scrutinized the photos, birth certificates and old passports of my children. I did pass muster, and was given a ticket for entry. My number was 878, and it was 10:55. I had been there for two hours and seven minutes. And it was very hot in the sun.

The culling of many people out of the line did at least let me move forward into a more shady spot. I sat there in my chair for another 10 minutes or so before a security guard came out and began to get us organized into groups of 10. After the 860s group went in, a security guard had us 870s line up at the door. I packed up my chair, got everything back into my backpack and was handed a mask by security. (The Passport Canada offices are still covered by the federal mask mandate; the rest of the building isn't.) We were led inside at 11:10.  There was no lineup for the elevator up to the third-floor, but there was another lineup once we got to the office. There were a series of notices about COVID policies and warnings against abusing or harassing the staff, which are no doubt a probably pretty good indication of how things have been going of late. My documents were reviewed again for the second time before I was let into the office. Once I'd passed that second screening, I was given a new number. I was no longer 878. Now I was YO27. It was 11:17.

I took a seat in the waiting area, grateful to be out of the sun and heat, and sat there. And sat there. And sat there. And sat there.

The Passport Canada office at Victoria Street has 17 booths where staff can meet with applicants. My view was partially obstructed by structural support columns, but I was still able to get a pretty accurate count of the staffing level. I never saw more than seven staff at the booths. Several more did seem to be working in office spaces behind them. Of the seven, one did not seem to be taking applicants, and I assume was there as a supervisor. She did indeed work with some individual applicants, but in a troubleshooting role: anyone who experienced some kind of problem was sent to her. For example, one gentleman was sent to her when the office's digital payment processing machines had trouble with his credit card. She was able to get that sorted out in a few minutes after a few phone calls, and the man left happy. But that was all I saw her do, and most of the work was left to the remaining six staff at the remaining booths. Unfortunately, even six functioning booths out of 17 was largely a theoretical ideal. Although the number of booths actually in business ebbed and flowed, there were typically only three or four of them actually accepting applicants at any time. For one brief period, shortly after noon, it dropped to precisely zero staff taking applications. The timing, and the variety of delicious smells that began drifting into the waiting areas from the office area behind the booths, strongly hinted that it was time for a lunch break.

I had been in the office for about an hour when things ground to a halt. They slowly returned to the "normal" staffing level of three or four booths actually being open over the course of the 12 o'clock hour, when things really and dramatically slowed down. Things had moved at a brisk enough pace between my arrival at 11:15ish and when the booths all closed around noon. They sped back up again as one o'clock approached. At 12:48, I made a specific note. It had been four hours since I'd arrived.

After a further quarter hour, at 1:04, I was finally called. I have never before been so happy to see YO27 appear on a big TV, and doubt I ever will again. Once I was up, the actual work of getting the passports put into the system only took about 20 minutes. I paid the expedited handling fee of $154 and was told they would be ready to be mailed to me or picked up by July 6. Not seeing any reason to subject myself to any unnecessary logistical hiccups courtesy of Canada Post, I chose the option of picking them up in person, and was given a form for each. Apparently, if I present them to security at the front desk, I’ll be allowed up to the third floor immediately on or after the sixth of next month, and will be able to pick them up without any delay, so long as I can show the tickets and a piece of photo ID.

Fair enough.

So I grabbed the tickets and put them into my backpack (in a Ziploc, yes). Retrieved my folding chair. And headed down the elevator. I stepped foot outside back on the sidewalk of Victoria Street at 1:22. By my count, from when I first stepped into line until I stepped out those doors, four hours and 34 minutes had passed.

Honestly, it’s not that bad. Annoying? Absolutely. Embarrassing for the government? You bet. Acceptable? Not even close. But even among first-world problems, this was a fairly mild one. 

But not everyone is as lucky as me. Not everyone can afford, financially or personally, to spend four and a half hours on a weekday listening to a sci-fi thriller while parked on a folding chair instead of being at work, or looking after young kids or other loved ones. I didn't have to drive hours to get there — just a few minutes. And I am news savvy enough to have known what I was getting into and come fully prepared, with chair, hat, water and entertainment. 

I want to reiterate something there — I'm news savvy. I came prepared and had all my documents in proper order. There were definitely some idiots clogging up the line — thinking of you, young dude who showed up with no application and no photos and just assumed it would all get done by the people upstairs and wasted almost three hours of your life in a lineup before learning this. But there were a lot of people there who were genuinely and sincerely confused by the rules. Some of this can be blamed on language barriers — even reasonable fluency in English doesn't prepare one for a blast of government bureaucratese. Some of the blame, though, has to be laid at the feet of contradictory and confusing government instructions. Remember: the woman who hoped to travel with her daughter overseas this summer had a completely legitimate point when she told the Passport Canada official that she had been told not to book a trip before getting the passport. But if she waits to get the passport before booking the trip, she may not be traveling until late this year, early next year. 

This is a hell of a thing to be asking of people who are separated from their families, and may just need to travel for emergency family or work-related reasons, even if they don’t have a specific trip booked right now. Imagine you have family overseas and one of them was in poor health. You could get a call or email at any time urging you to rush to their side. Or your job may require you to travel internationally on short notice and unexpectedly. You could have a sudden family emergency without any prior medical warning. These are real-life scenarios, and it is the official policy of the government of Canada that, if your passport is expired or expiring, it's your responsibility and duty to … hurry up and wait and hope you get a new one in the mail before anything bad happens, or if something urgent does come up, that you have the time and money to get yourself to a Passport Canada office and hope you're able to get in for emergency service. Even if you have to drive in from Sudbury. It's absurd.

I have to note further here that those who have relied on mailing in their passports are coming to regret it. Before the Passport Canada staff divided us up into the north and south lines, there were many people mingled in with us new applicants who were there to check on the status of an existing application. Indeed, by coincidence, I realized I had a friend from high school in the line ahead of me. We got to texting back and forth. She had sent in new applications for her sons many months ago, with plans to travel shortly. After months of hearing nothing, she had to take a morning off work and head downtown and wait outside, with the rest of us, to get the process hurried up. Another woman I met on Tuesday explained to me that her 15-year-old was planning to spend part of the summer with family in Europe. She sent in all the papers in March, thinking that was enough time — a full 12 weeks, and the government says they'll need "only" nine. He was scheduled to fly out on Wednesday, but as of Tuesday, she had heard absolutely nothing. Not a peep. Her son's paperwork had just vanished into a tear in the space-time continuum. She was in tears — of gratitude, this time — as we left the building together because officials there had promised her they would issue her son a passport on an emergency basis and waive the usual fees. She was off to go find a coffee shop to wait in for the requested two hours. "Thank God I had all the paperwork filled out perfectly," she said, wiping away a tear. 

Thank God indeed. And, if I may, what the hell are we doing here? My experience was a cheerfully borne inconvenience. Much as with my recent jaunt to LaGuardia and back from Pearson, I stayed in high spirits knowing full well that the more dysfunctional the experience was, the better the story would be for you, the readers, who apparently enjoy seeing me suffer. I’m no victim here. But there are people, real-life Canadians, being subjected to stress and emotional upset by this dysfunction. 

Not all travel is tourism. Not every trip is a happy one. Canadians have a right to come and go from the country. Getting them the travel documents they require to do so is extremely basic government competency stuff. And we are flunking.

And don’t buy into any suggestion that the burden on Passport Canada is in any way unprecedented. Brian Lilley, a journalist at Postmedia, reported just days ago that the average number of passports issued per week by Passports Canada between 2013 and 2018 was between 90,000 to 98,000. According to the government's own statements, the government has received just over half a million applications in the last 10 weeks. That's just a bit over 50,000 per week, or roughly half the normal pre-pandemic volume of applicants. This is not an issue of pent-up demand swamping a functional system due to unprecedented levels of applications. This is entirely an issue of dysfunction within the federal government.

Is this the most pressing issue facing Canadians today? No. We have a slowly collapsing health-care system, a war in Europe, and a wobbling economy to worry us. But for some Canadians today, right now, an inability to access travel documents will result in missed business opportunities or painful family separations and tragedies. For them, the stress and pain they are feeling is as real and acute as any abstract concern over hospitals, Ukraine and the consumer price index. These are real people, with real problems, and all they need is a government that is able to do a simple, basic thing about as well as it could do back in ... 2018.

But we don’t have that right now. Is that acceptable to you?

Oh, and one last thing. I’ll keep you updated as to whether or not the passports are actually available as promised on July 6. I’m planning on being on holiday that week, so I might not be able to pick them up before the week of July 11th. But Line readers will get an update here once I have those precious documents safely in hand. 

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