The federal workers’ strike is jeopardizing the plans of many travelers across the country. Three students from Abitibi for Gatineau’s express passport services found out the hard way on Wednesday, the first day of the strike.
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“We’re at the end of the session, we couldn’t go to Gatineau at any time. It was our only day that we could come, so we said goodbye, we left around 4am, we drove here for six hours by bus and we couldn’t go any further,” explained Ariane Poirier in front of the service office Canada in Hull.
Getting her passport took longer than expected because her birth certificate caught fire in a fire that burned down her home, she said, so she resorted to government express services.
She was due to leave for Cuba on Thursday April 27 with her friends Magalie Thibodeau and Léanne Ferron to celebrate the end of the session. She is now considering withdrawing from the planned project “for months”.
Ariane and her friends have rented a hotel room and will try again tomorrow. “If they stop striking tomorrow, we’ll come back, otherwise I’ll cancel my trip. It’s disappointing.”
Opposite the office, from which low faces emerge, a leaflet explains that “essential services” will remain available to travellers, such as customers who state “medical reasons” or “illness in their family”.
That didn’t help Ahmid either, who waited every day for his passport to be renewed so that he could visit his sick brother in Morocco on May 3.
The man, who preferred not to give his last name, met outside the Complexe Desjardins passport office and made his request on April 11. He now relies on a doctor’s certificate, which he wants to get to save his trip.
“I’ve been told that everything that isn’t essential stands still. If it’s not in the mail I won’t get it. I’m stressed out about the situation. I understand very well the people who are on strike, but I am a victim of all of this,” he said.
Minister in charge of the passport file, Karina Gould, was not reassuring.
While she hopes the disruption in services will be “short-lived,” “the majority of Canadians will therefore not be able to obtain or renew their passports during the strike,” she said.
Each strike week corresponds to 85,000 requests that accumulate in the system. However, Ms Gould assures that the government has ‘lessened’ from last summer’s disaster and that ‘we don’t expect to see lines at passport offices’, as was the case.
When asked what message she would send to a family who might miss a Disney vacation next week, the minister replied that she was “feeling very bad”.
Isabelle Charette traveled to Montreal with her husband and a friend of Saint-Jérôme to have her passport renewed, but to no avail.
“We were told that even if we sent our documents through the mail, they would not be processed,” lamented the man who has had to postpone or cancel a trip to Mexico scheduled for May 22.
“It’s annoying. This strike is none of our business. It’s a lot of trouble for people who have nothing to do with it,” she cursed.
For Annie-Gabrielle, her dream of learning German went up in smoke. “If the strike doesn’t end soon, I won’t be able to go,” said the woman, who fears having to cancel a $2,700 trip to Germany.
“I’m self-employed, I don’t have much money. The ticket, the accommodation… I worked hard for my project, I didn’t steal it, this money,” she said, close to tears.