I haven’t written about Canadian issues in a while because I’ve been super-busy tracking tech stuff, but after my experience at Canada’s San Francisco consulate today, I feel obligated to warn other Canadians in the US who may suffer the same fate.
Here’s the nasty scoop on inefficient Canadian bureaucrats and on renewing your passport if you have time constraints:
My passport is still valid, but I have run out of pages (yes, a lot of travel in the last year), so I either need new pages or a new passport. Here is what I learned: Canada no longer issues extra pages, so if you run out, you need a new passport. The other bad change in policy is that you can no longer get a passport through the LA Consulate. In fact, according to the non-helpful official at the front desk at the SF Consulate, NONE of the US-based Canadian consulates can issue passports.
My problem is that I have already paid for a rather expensive non-refundable ticket to China and I have 8 days left to get a Canadian passport that has space for a Chinese visa. The SF Consulate official told me I can fly to Vancouver to try to get a passport, but she wouldn’t tell me anything else. Like, what if I fly there and they won’t issue it for another week? Then I have wasted my time. Now, you’re probably thinking that there’s someone I can call to ask if it’s at all possible to get a rush passport. The answer is NO. No one answers the phones at any of the Consulates or at the passport office – if you want a human you have to physically show up at their office. All the phone will get you is pre-recorded information with an answering machine. You can leave a message on the machine, but no one is likely to call you back. Not within 8 days at least. When did things get this bad?
Stephen Harper and his advisors are smart people, so I would have thought that they’d be managing things better than this. Tomorrow, I’m going to contact a private company that promises to help Canadians navigate through the nasty bureaucratic mess that is the Canadian passport system. I will post an update as things progress. Until then, please wish me luck. I WILL need it.