I did it. I got a passport. I finally got my hands on the little blue book that would allow my daughter to travel, just 20 hours before our flight.
It might have been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Across the country, it’s difficult to get a passport. It’s downright brutal in southern Ontario, particularly in the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area.
In places like Fredericton, you can use the eServiceCanada Appointment Booking Tool to get an appointment at a federally run passport office almost right away. In a month’s time, someone will see you in Kelowna, Quebec City, or Halifax.
Of the 14 offices in Ontario, only one is accepting appointments at all: Thunder Bay. In the GTHA, you can’t even get an appointment at a Service Canada outlet to file a passport application for travel set to take place beyond 45 days.
All locations take walk-ins to submit passport applications, too, but then you have to wait. On its website, Service Canada provides wait-time estimates; in most GTHA locations, they surge to six hours plus. (These estimates don’t indicate when it’d be too late to join the line to get served that day.)
Yet, I got a passport in Toronto. This is how the hellish process went down.
Omicron hit in January, before I could deal with my daughter’s soon-to-expire passport. We had booked an extended family trip to Mexico in late May. Then a death in my family further kept me from organizing paperwork and risking exposure to COVID-19.
In April, passport panic hit. Amid the first news reports of horrific lineups, I searched for an appointment at a passport office but could not get one until after my trip — and that was at a Service Canada outlet, not a passport office. When I checked again, there were no appointments at all. I made an online service request. Service Canada issued no confirmation. Did I dream it? I sent in another.
A rep called and told me that, if I mailed in the application, I’d be fine. Then I got a second call, and she told me to mail my daughter’s birth certificate along with the old passport — sage advice that saved me from disaster.
Almost a month later, a week and a half before my trip, on a Monday morning, I began melting down. Where was this passport? Was it lost forever in a pile of envelopes in Gatineau? I rallied my village. I found out that my nephew had mailed his application in March, visited a passport office in Ottawa in early May — waiting four hours, starting at 7:45 am — and had it transferred from the world of mail-in processing to the Ottawa office. He had an appointment to pick up his completed passport a few days before the trip.
I did another Service Canada request, this time to check the status of the passport application. Again, I got no confirmation and, in fact, I never heard back from this service, ever.
Friends online suggested the North York office might be less chaotic than those in downtown Toronto; a friend scoured Reddit for tips on how to get through via Passport Canada’s 1-800 number, which eternally reported no agents available to accept my call.
On Tuesday, Service Canada charged my credit card. Maybe it was done! That afternoon, I began calling the toll-free line repeatedly. I got through and was told I was 134th in line.
My phone hung up after one hour — my bad, I didn’t touch the phone during the wait, and the call timed out — so I punched the number again several times. After another hour, I spoke to an agent. He transferred my “in production” passport to North York from a processing office in Victoria, where staff had been planning to mail it many days after our plane left. He told me I’d get a call in a few days.
So I waited. Like a bad boyfriend, however, the North York office never called, and there was no way to call it. Stress-filled days and sleepless nights followed, so on Thursday I called the toll-free line again.
I pressed redial 40 times that night — with efficiency. I had learned that an unsuccessful call yields one pre-recorded message, while a hit leads to a different voice giving you menu options.
I waited for just half an hour on the line. “Maybe you should go in,” this service rep mused, assuring me that I could go into what’s called the transfer line, a special line for those whose passports had been transferred to that office and were ready to be printed. He made it sound like this line would be shorter and more awesome than the regular old line.
At 8:30 the next morning, Friday, I arrived at 4900 Yonge Street. “You’ll be here all day,” a security guard droned to everyone joining the transfer line. (The regular line looked even worse.) Not long after my arrival, they cut the transfer line, allowing only new arrivals who were travelling over the next four days, as this was the May long weekend.
Thankfully, we were able to wait in a hallway bookended with washrooms and even a water-bottle-filling station. In other passport offices, such as the one in downtown Toronto, you wait outside with no amenities and right in the elements.
Two ahead of me in line was a man who told me he’d mailed his application in January. Behind me were a group of women from Barrie set to fly to Mexico on Sunday. They said they had submitted their applications months ago at a Service Canada office in Barrie and gotten their Member of Parliament involved in their quest, which had helped little. They were sleep deprived, like me, and one showed me dots of stress hives all up her arm.
“You can track your pizza, but you can’t track your passport!” one of the Barrie women was fond of saying. (She also deeply lamented not having brought a book.) Indeed, one of my Service Canada reps had given me a tracking number, but it was useless unless you were talking to someone official, which was never.
After five hours, I faced a passport agent who stamped things, had me fill out a retro-looking chit with my credit-card info for the $20 transfer fee, took a copy of my daughter’s plane ticket, and handed me a green slip of paper reading “Tuesday 1:00.” Could I pretty please get my passport printed today? Nope. Just for those travelling in the next four days.
The author's daughter received her passport a day before her trip. (Diane Peters)
I returned after the long weekend, was ushered to a counter, and got the passport minutes later. We went to the airport the next morning and were off.
In response to questions about poor and inconsistent services, Employment and Social Development Canada tells TVO.org via email that call-centre staff are frequently updated regarding “operational changes that may affect the responses they should provide to callers.” In regards to lack of amenities for those lining up at some offices, they said that staff “triage the client line regularly to ensure client requiring assistance are identified and appropriate or alternative measures are offered.”
As for the needs of growing regions such as southern Ontario, the government states it “continually assesses the needs of clients and communities to ensure that services are aligned with client demand.” Overall, it writes, there could be “potential policy changes to simplify the passport program, as well as further automation.”
The government did not answer questions regarding not confirming online service requests and the lack of a response to a request to track a passport.
Could you soon track your passport like it was a pizza? Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada tells TVO.org via email that "while sharing tracking numbers online is not currently a feature planned for the short term, we are exploring the possibility of adding something similar in the future."
Getting a passport in southern Ontario verges on the hellish. But it can be done. File early. Call the toll-free number relentlessly. Visit in person if you want action (go before 8 a.m.) and only visit a site with proper amenities unless you have a strong bladder. And for goodness’ sakes, people, bring a book — you’ll probably be there all day.
3:43 p.m., June 22: This article has been updated with comment from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.