The document is for their 13-month-old baby girl. They are traveling in a few days, which means that the passport process has come to an end. “It’s great to finally have it in hand. It was a long process,” Vale told Global News. “It’s been about nine or ten weeks now.” Vale and his family travel to the east coast and bypass the United States.
Read more: Scouts honor patience as passport wait times threaten ability to travel
His wife spent hours on both the French and English phone lines, trying to expedite the process. When he finally did, Vale says they learned their daughter’s application had never been considered before that time. He tells Global News they submitted it nine weeks ago. Story continues below ad “That’s when we were able to really move the process to two days,” he explained. From April 1 to the end of June, Service Canada received more than 808,000 applications, which is about 166,000 more than it received during the same period in 2019. Trending Stories
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Families Minister Karina Gould acknowledged during an interview with Global News that more needs to be done, and quickly. Gould has said she is confident the government can clear the backlog in four to six weeks or by the end of the summer.
Read more: Feds aim to clear passport backlog in next ‘4 to 6 weeks’: Minister
Many people Global News has spoken to say they’ve experienced a lack of communication and don’t know where their apps are. Story continues below ad During an interview with Global News last week, Minister Gould said the government was working on a notification system that would allow them to provide status updates to people who provided their contact information. “Part of the challenge was that we didn’t have enough resources to get these applications into the system in time, and then that slowed everything down,” the minister said during an interview this week. “So now we have more passport officers coming on board to get those passports, do the assessment, do the assessment and then issue them, print them and send them out the door.” In a statement issued on July 19, the government says that for the week of July 4 to July 10, staff had worked 9,349 hours of overtime. As of April 1, Service Canada has issued 556,769 passports. © 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
