Kylie Potter Scott was looking forward to taking her 10-year-old daughter across the Canadian border for the first time to vacation in northern New York State within two weeks.

But while waiting for hours outside the passport office in Toronto, Potter Scott said she had to trust the official's assurances that her daughter would receive her documents for the weekend trip with family and friends.

Potter Scott said, "If we don't get it, my daughter won’t be able to come with us, and that would be unfortunate." "I hope we get it on time."

She was among dozens of people in a line stretching down the building on Wednesday, some carrying folding chairs as they moved toward the door to submit their passport applications.

Some travelers expressed concerns that their summer vacation plans could be affected because pent-up travel demand after the pandemic has led to a backlog in passport processing times.

Officials were preparing for a surge in passport demand as COVID-19 border measures eased, bringing in 600 new employees to help sort and verify paperwork. Last month, Service Canada reopened all passport service counters nationwide, with additional counters added at over 300 centers.

But as many Canadians look to venture abroad after more than two years of pandemic travel restrictions, some passport applicants say they have been forced to camp outside service centers or reschedule trips due to bureaucratic bottlenecks.

The situation seemed to come as a surprise to federal officials.

Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Karina Gould told a parliamentary committee on May 30: "The fact of the matter is that while we expected an increase in volume, this massive surge in demand has exceeded expectations and outstripped capacity."

"We know many people have faced very challenging circumstances. That is why I directed officials to work as hard as possible to meet demand."

Between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, Service Canada issued 363,000 passports as services were limited to urgent travel cases.

But with the world reopening, demand rose significantly. Between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, nearly 1.3 million passports were issued.

Since April, over 317,000 passports have been delivered, with federal projections for 2022-2023 ranging between 3.6 million and 4.3 million applications.

A spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada said in a statement that based on forecasts from last week, 75 percent of Canadians applying for a passport receive one within 40 business days. Ninety-six percent of those applying in person at a specialized site receive a passport within 10 business days.

On a related note, Nadia El-Sayed in Oakville, Ontario, said she mailed her infant daughter's passport application in early April, indicating an initial travel date in late May.

She then waited for the passport to arrive in her mailbox by that date, but it has yet to arrive. As passport services do not answer the phone, she resorted to contacting her parliamentary representative and discovered her daughter's documents were among a pile of other applications in Gatineau, Quebec.

She arranged to send her daughter's application to another office in the Mississauga suburb of Toronto. El-Sayed said officials told her they would work on preparing the passport 48 hours before her family's travel date to the United States this month, but this promise is uncertain and not reassuring.

Edited by: Dima Abu Khair