Question Period Note: PASSPORT SERVICE STANDARDS

Fournir des mises à jour hebdomadaires sur les normes de service de passeport.

The performance target for passport applications is 90% of complete applications are processed within the published service standards:

10 days to process in-person passport applications received at a specialized passport office or a Service Canada Centre that offers expedited services.

20 days for applications received by mail or in-person at a Service Canada Centre.

ESDC/Service Canada expects to receive between 4.5 and 4.7 million passport applications during the 2023-24 fiscal year.

Clients can check approximate wait times for Service Canada’s passport offices on Find a Service Canada Office webpage to help prepare for their visit.

Clients have the option of booking an appointment for a passport service using the eServiceCanada portal.

Clients can track the status of their application anytime and from anywhere on the Passport Application Status Checker.

The Passport program service standards apply only to properly completed applications. They do not include time required for postal delivery, complex verifications and security checks, or status/citizenship verifications. The standards for all Passport program services were implemented in July 2013, unless otherwise stated.

The department responded to post-pandemic service delivery challenges with a focus on ensuring Canadians received high-quality and efficient government services.

Canada’s passport program experienced a set of interconnected issues created by the pandemic, which manifested through pressures on Service Canada’s passport service delivery. In response to the challenges, significant work was undertaken to eliminate the backlog and return processing times to pre-pandemic levels. The backlog was eliminated at the end of the 2022-23 fiscal year. 99% of passports, regardless of intake channel, were processed within the 10- and 20-business days service standard. Service Canada have carried some actions forward, as it prepared for anticipated volumes:

Launched an appointment-booking tool that directs clients to the right location for service while continuously updating the website with up-to-date statistics and wait times.

Launched the Passport Application Status Checker in March 2023, allowing clients to track the progress of their application.

Expanded eligibility for simplified processing to replace expired passports (up to 15 years) as renewals rather than new applications.

Increased access to passport services, with the addition of 21 Service Canada Centres offering passports within 10 business days, with additional sites launching in the coming months.

Expanded the delivery of passport services to scheduled outreach sites to help meet the passport needs of rural and remote communities.

Service Canada also continues to work with the passport program owners at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada as they modernize the system and continue to improve the automation of the application process in order to increase our processing capacity for simplified renewal applications.

Canadians have been using the Passport Application Status Checker for real-time updates on their applications since the launch in March 2023.

As of December 3rd, over 2.2M Canadians have visited the Passport Application Status Checker.

Over 1.5M requests for passport status searches were received, by 273K unique clients, with 72% being successful.

A client may not be successful:

If they do not have a File Number and did not include their email address on their application

If they submitted their application within the last 5 days in person or 10 days by mail as it may take time to receive the application and create the record in the system.

If the application is an excluded file type such as a diplomatic or special passport, a certified true copy, a certificate of Identity and Refugee Travel document as well as all applications submitted at a Canadian mission abroad.

If they entered information into the checker that does not match the application

Service standards are the program’s commitment to process an application in a certain amount of time, under normal circumstances.

The processing time is the actual time it takes to process an application. The processing may fluctuate based on internal and external factors.

The time to mail passports to clients domestically and to missions abroad is not included in the calculation of the processing time or service standard.

A small number of cases may take longer due to routine verifications or security checks which do not count towards the processing time.

At the end of the 2022-23 fiscal year, the backlog was eliminated, and the passport program was processing applications within service standard 99% of the time. More specifically, 99% of passports, regardless of intake channel, were processed within the 10- and 20-business days service standard.

In response to the 2022 passport surge, Service Canada introduced a variety of new measures to improve passport service delivery and decrease wait times for Canadians.