Canadians routinely wait hours on the phone and in person when dealing with Passport Canada, leaving many travelers frustrated with the agency's poor customer service.

The chaos witnessed in passport offices in the post-Corona virus era has prompted the federal government to intensify its efforts and promise a series of changes to deliver passports to travelers in a timely manner.

Passport Canada claims that after a long period of pandemic-related delays, the agency has returned to its "normal" service standard of providing passports to most people within 10 to 20 business days, depending on where the application is initially submitted.

However, the agency's service standard does not make any promises about how quickly it serves people in person or over the phone.

Data and anecdotal reports indicate that Passport Canada's customer service record is poor.

Despite Passport Canada's commitment to processing 90 percent of all mail-in applications within 20 days, government data from 2022 to 2023 reveals that Passport Canada met the 20-day processing target in only 52 percent of cases, with some customers stating that processing times took 40 days.

Andrew Griffith, former director general of the Canadian Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC) who also worked at Service Canada and in passport files during his long government tenure, said, "Wait times are excessive, and no one leaves happy if they have to wait three hours in person or on the phone."

He added, "They either need to increase staff numbers or find other ways to reduce the time gap, and I think, from a service perspective, this is a real problem that undermines people's trust in governmental institutions."