Transport Minister Omar Alghabra says the federal government is working on new measures to help ease delays at major airports, adding that a “similar phenomenon” is happening worldwide. But what those measures are remain a mystery.

Speaking with reporters this week, the minister said working groups that include airports, airlines, public health, and federal officials are meeting up to three times a week to try and find solutions.

But when pressed for details about when changes are expected, Alghabra said he’s not yet ready to announce new measures.

People travelling through Canadian airports have been experiencing long lines and flight delays as post-pandemic travel ramps up, particularly at Toronto Pearson.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says the Canada Border Services Agency and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority are both hiring new staff, adding it’s important that airports also ensure they have enough employees.

Canada’s travel and business communities have been calling on the government to lift travel restrictions, which require anyone returning from outside the country to confirm their vaccination status and end the use of the ArriveCan app and stop random COVID-19 testing at airports.

Passports

Meanwhile, Canada’s passport office continues to deal with a flood of applications, prompting a severe backlog that is causing fears amongst some aspiring travellers that their summer vacation plans could be scrambled as they wait to receive their documents.

Officials have been bracing for a rise in passport demand with the relaxation of COVID-19 border measures, bringing on 600 new employees to help sort through the influx of paperwork. Last month, Service Canada reopened all passport service counters across the country, and additional counters have been added at more than 300 centres.

But as many Canadians look to venture abroad after more than two years of pandemic-restricted travel, some passport seekers say they’ve been forced to camp outside service centres or reschedule trips because of the bureaucratic bottleneck.

It seemed to catch federal officials by surprise.

“The fact of the matter is that while we were anticipating increased volume, this massive surge in demand has outpaced forecasts and outstripped capacity,” Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould told a parliamentary committee recently.

“We know many people have been put in very difficult circumstances. And that is why I have directed officials to work as hard as possible to meet the demand.”

Between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, Service Canada issued 363,000 passports as services were limited to urgent travel cases. But as the world has reopened, demand has skyrocketed. Between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, nearly 1.3 million passports were issued.

Since April, more than 317,000 passports have been handed out, and the federal forecast for 2022-23 is between 3.6 million and 4.3 million applications.

Based on projections from last week, 75% of Canadians who apply for a passport receive one within 40 working days, a spokesperson for Employment and Social Development Canada said, while 96% of those who apply in-person at a specialized site receive a passport within 10 working days.

Nadia Elsayed in Oakville, Ont., said she mailed her infant daughter’s passport application in early April, indicating a tentative travel date of late May.

Elsayed waited for the envelope to arrive in her mailbox as that date came and went. With passport services not picking up the phone, she turned to her member of Parliament, and found out that her daughter’s documents were sitting in a stack of other applications in Gatineau, Que.

She arranged to have her daughter’s application sent to another office in Mississauga. Officials told her they’d aim to have the passport ready 48 hours before her family is set to travel to the United States this month, Elsayed said, but that’s cutting it too close for comfort.

“It still feels a little bit up in the air, to be honest,” she said. “It just feels like we’re kind of hanging on and just hoping that things turn out.”