Ottawa significantly reduced the number of staff dedicated to processing passport applications between 2018 and 2021. Result: Nearly half as many in early 2022 to respond to the many requests from Canadians to travel after key restrictions on international travel passports were lifted.
Posted at 5:00 am
According to La Presse, under Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s Access to Information Act, 1,512 officers were responsible for responding to passport applications as of early 2018. In 2021 there were more than 893, a number that rose to 1161 the following year.
These significant staff reductions have severely impacted Passport Canada’s ability to process the deluge of applications in the summer of 2022, says Yvon Barrière, regional executive vice-president Quebec at the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC). “We had between 40 and 50% fewer staff,” he says.
Where have all these employees gone? At the height of the pandemic, when restrictive measures severely curtailed international travel, many people were reassigned to other services. In particular, many Passport Canada officials were working to process Canadian Emergency Benefits (CERB) applications at a time when COVID-19 was forcing the shutdown of many industries.
Whenever there was a new citizen assistance program, the government tended to bring in staff from the Revenue Agency, Immigration and Passport.
Yvon Barrière, Regional Executive Vice-President Quebec at the Public Service Alliance of Canada
A year and a half late
But according to Mr. Barrière, downsizing is not the only cause of the passport crisis that made headlines in the summer of 2022. A significant delay in processing applications at the height of the pandemic also exacerbated the situation.
“Passport applications, although people cannot travel, they can wait. Put them aside, managers said,” says Mr. Barrière, who estimates that this has accumulated up to a year and a half of delays in processing requests.
“All the ingredients were there for what we knew [à l’été 2022] “, he argues. Therefore, at a time when foreign travel restrictions were no longer in place, employees faced a significant increase in applications for new or renewed passports. All this with a significant cumulative delay over the previous two years.
“They didn’t see the crisis coming,” argues Yvon Barrière. However, he believes this was entirely predictable. “If the managers had planned that, we wouldn’t have had the queues we’re used to,” he says.
When Ottawa began hiring in the face of the flood of requests, things didn’t necessarily improve, at least in the short term. “Employees had to be trained, and we often hired the best to train them. They didn’t have time to process the applications. »
The union representative also dismisses the argument that the large number of employees who have been working from home over the past three years could have slowed down the processing of passport applications.
According to La Presse, in 2020, 2021 and 2022 at least 80% of the staff processing passport applications worked remotely,” explains Yvon Barrière.
“They Had Their Lesson”
The majority of the employees loaned to other services have been repatriated, he believes to have caught up the backlog in processing applications.
“They had their lesson. You take back control. We should not see a new crisis,” he concludes.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not respond to questions from La Presse and invited us to write to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). In response to our email, ESDC said they were unable to answer our questions on Friday.
With the collaboration of William Leclerc, La Presse
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5.1 million Number of passports issued by Ottawa between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018. During this period, 1,512 employees were tasked with processing applications.
Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
1161 Number of people tasked with processing passport applications at the end of 2022. Almost 1.5 million passports were issued in 2022.
Source: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada