Kelowna-Lake Country MP Tracy Gray Getting the basics right about serving people is the first step in customer service that small businesses face every day. It is unfortunate that this has not been the norm for the current federal government. The basic services that Canadians deserve and pay for with their taxes are not being delivered through gross mismanagement and lack of leadership by our federal government, and it’s a mess. I have countless constituents contacting me every day about backlogs and unresponsive issues from every federal department, including the CRA, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (IRCC), Service Canada (including passports), and veterans’ disability applications. While many Canadians were hoping to go camping this summer, they probably didn’t expect it to be in the parking lot of a Service Canada office. We have now seen widespread reports of unmanageable backlogs, dawn-to-dusk queues and growing frustration for people seeking a basic service such as a passport application. This is not federal employees not working hard, this is mismanagement from above. Our constituency office faces heartbreaking situations every day. The government can say it is deeply concerned about the delays, but it can’t say they weren’t warned of potential issues months ago. (Oh, if only the government had a way to know when passports expire. Of course they do). The government even allowed many senior officials to receive bonuses even though many of their departments failed. Another fact is that the number of passport applications is lower than at pre-pandemic levels. Andrew Griffith, IRCC’s former director general and a former top official at Service Canada, said IRCC’s 2022-23 department plan told the government there would almost certainly be an increase in passport applications as COVID restrictions are lifted. Common sense would dictate that as borders opened abroad, Canadians would seek the opportunity to travel. Common sense would also dictate that one response should be to ensure proper procedures and staffing at airports and for passports. Again, the government waited until we were deeply dysfunctional before hiring more workers, only a fraction of whom will be able to issue new passports because they lack full training, according to Kevin King, president of the National Workers Union, which represents Service Canada employees. This was despite the government’s claims that it was trying to handle “unprecedented” volumes. The truth is that government statistics for 2022 show an average of 54,200 passport applications per week, with increases of up to 75,000 per week. That falls well below the 90,000 to 98,000 weekly Service Canada was issuing before the pandemic, discrediting the government’s claims of “unprecedented volumes.” This malfunction has also compromised my office’s ability to serve constituents in Kelowna-Lake Country and assist with IRCC applications. The backlog of cases has now exceeded two million applications in all categories. As a result, it limits the number of cases an MP’s office can be called upon to help with to just five at a time. Immigration cases in our office range from temporary foreign worker visas to refugee status. When they challenged this at the Industry Committee I sit on, IRCC officials said it would take until the end of this year to meet even standard service processing times. Deleting the one-year immigration project will have broad and adverse effects on the Okanagan economy, including our agricultural sector and others suffering from labor shortages. Limiting my office’s ability to serve local families and small businesses is not acceptable. Now we’re hearing that Canada topped the world’s list of flight delays last weekend. The government’s response to all this? A ministerial task force to “listen better to concerns”, according to its co-chair. Canadians have made their case as to where (the sense) the problems lie, and it’s time for the government to do its job to ensure that the essential services your tax dollars pay for are accessible in a way that doesn’t include sleeping bags parking spaces. If you need any help with programs or have any thoughts to share, please feel free to contact 250-470-5075 or [email protected]. This article was written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
