The measures announced by Ottawa last week do not appear to have changed the situation at the Quebec passport office, which is still being stormed by hundreds of people, including dozens who stayed there from Sunday to Monday.
• Also read: Passports that don’t pass
• Also read: Quiet outside passport offices this weekend
Mélanie Bourassa, a single mother of two, was there just before 8:30 a.m. Monday morning, holding her few-month-old daughter.
She tried her luck for the fourth time when her flight to Nevada was scheduled for… 10:17 am the same morning. “It just doesn’t make sense,” she blurts out, her voice shaking.
As a musician, she has to fly to a concert and needs a passport for her daughter, who she doesn’t want to leave behind because she is breastfeeding her.
When the office opened, the security guard let in those who left on the same day, like Mélanie, and those who had an 8:30 appointment first.
- Listen to the interview with Louis-Antoine Lemire, who came to the New Brunswick office, at the microphone of Alexandre Moranville-Ouellet on QUB radio:
Sleep outside for a pass
The others had to stand in line. According to several, at least thirty of them had spent the night outdoors, including Mathieu Jacob, who plans to fly to Mexico with his two children on July 9.
Shelter, sleeping bag and cool box, he was “one of the best equipped”, according to one of his liner companions, who also stayed there after arriving around 1 p.m. on Sunday.
The latter, who preferred not to reveal his identity, had made it his mission to hang around for hours, unable to follow up on passport applications sent “months ago” for his boys.
For two days, he used an app that allowed him to repeatedly call Passport Canada’s phone line with no success, despite more than 5,000 attempts, he says.
- Listen to the meeting between Joseph Facal and Patrick Déry on QUB Radio:
No change
In Quebec, several people met by Le Journal who also stayed last week noticed no change in how the queue was managed.
You’ve never seen coupons floating around, a new system launched in Montreal a few days ago to bring some order to the chaotic management of waiting to receive that precious travel document.
Screenshot TVA News
Queues for passports were still so long Monday at the Complexe Guy-Favreau in Montreal despite the new measures Ottawa put in place to deal with the crisis. Several citizens spent the night outside hoping to receive their precious travel document.
Why the new measures introduced in Montreal were not extended to other passport offices like Quebec’s could not be found out on Monday.
Service Canada had not yet answered our questions at the time of writing this article.
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