China News Service, August 18. According to a comprehensive report by Canada's "Sing Tao Daily", the Canadian federal government plans to open four new passport processing points across the country to deal with the months-long and backlog of nationals applying for passports.
According to reports, there is now a backlog of more than 250,000 unprocessed passport applications.
Gould, the minister in charge of passport services, said on Wednesday (17th) that four additional passport application and pickup service points will be opened nationwide, namely in Trois Rivers, Que., Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Charlotte, Prince Edward Island and Red Deer, Alberta.
She added that nationals who apply for passports in the above-mentioned areas are expected to obtain their passports within 10 working days.
In addition, the government also plans to open 9 to 10 additional passport processing points of the same type in the near future, so that most citizens can smoothly obtain passport services within a range of 50 kilometers.
Service Canada has seen a surge in passport applications as nationals plan to travel abroad in the wake of the pandemic.
Especially in the spring of this year, it was rumored that the number of passport applications nationwide was 40 times higher than before the epidemic.
Gould responded by saying that the authorities were aware of the increase in demand for nationals to travel abroad after the lifting of the new crown pneumonia epidemic restrictions, but did not expect the demand for passports to become so huge at the time.
"There were 281,055 passport applications in June, the highest monthly peak this year. However, the situation has improved a lot since June," she said.
In addition, the government recently promised to hire more staff and set up a special working group for passport applications to reduce the waiting time for citizens to apply for passports.
Some nationals did not hesitate to wait in line at Service Canada in the early hours of the morning in order to obtain their passports. There were long queues every day at Service Canada in many parts of the country. There were also families who had delayed passport distribution, which ultimately led to the failure of their journey.
Since April, Service Canada has accepted 1,092,560 passport applications and issued 748,784, according to the latest government figures, meaning there is still a backlog of about 250,000 applications.