Service Canada management said “mysterious system outages” are leading to poor passport office service in the country, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
This despite the passport office doubling its payroll in 2023 from 1,391 employees to some 2,600 staffers, according to records.
“Service Canada continued to experience system outages that impacted the intake, processing and print systems,” said a Dec. 12 note titled “Passport Service Delivery Update.”
“These outages had negative effects on the overall program and impacted performance which resulted in fewer passports being issued to clients.”
Service Canada said it was attempting to “fix network and system issues,” but management did not elaborate on the outages.
The outages were in addition to delays in mailing 215,000 Canadian passports due to a 28-day post office strike that ended Dec. 13.
“The cumulative effect of these outages has been an increase in the overall inventory including the out-of-standard inventory, slippage on service standards and increased processing times,” said the Service Canada note.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO
In-person waiting times in December averaged 67 minutes at Service Canada offices, while telephone inquiries averaged 33 minutes.
Minimum service standards promise all applications will be processed within 10 business days if filed in person and 20 days by mail 90% of the time. The note said Service Canada had not met the service standard despite staff logging 246,000 hours of overtime in 2024.
“The passport program has always had a need to use overtime to manage the program,” wrote management.
“This occurs for situations such as weekend duty to provide clients with passports needed urgently as well as to manage peaks in volumes. More recently, Service Canada has been relying heavily on overtime to recover from higher-than-forecasted volumes and system outages that occurred earlier in the year.”