Passport services expanded to more than 300 Service Canada Centres across Canada

 

PASSPORT services have now been expanded from 151 to over 300 Service Canada Centres, providing Canadians with more options when applying for or renewing a passport.

Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, and Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, made the announcement on Thursday.

Service Canada Centre locations across the country are now receiving passport applications and validating citizenship documents, making it more convenient and accessible for Canadians to submit passport applications.

Canadians applying for passports at a Service Canada Centre are able to submit their applications and have their citizenship documents, like birth certificates and certificates of citizenship, validated and returned to them while they are in the office. Service Canada Centres will also assist citizens with their standard passport application by reviewing it on site for completeness, accepting payment and forwarding it on for processing.

Hussen said: “Canada’s passport program provides a valuable service to millions of Canadians every year. By improving our front-line services and offering them in more locations, we can continue to meet the excellent service standards that Canadians have come to expect when applying for a passport.”

Duclos said: “Canadians want better, faster and more accessible services from their government. By leveraging Service Canada’s nationwide service delivery network, the Government of Canada is making passport services more convenient for Canadians.”

 

Quick Facts

 

* As of April 1, 2017, approximately 60 percent of Canadian adults held a valid Canadian passport.

* In 2016–17, Canada issued more than 4.8 million passports, which translates into over 19,000 passports issued daily.

* The expansion will result in over 97 percent of Canadians having access to passport services within a 100 km distance of their home.

* Passport services exceeded the 90 percent program service standard and Service Canada met a service standard of 99.57 percent in fiscal 2016–17.