For those of you following my blog, you’ll know that I was forced to fly to Vancouver to get a new passport because the Canadian consulates in the US no longer offer that service to Canadians living in the US. Not only is this super-annoying, but it is also super-expensive.
The costs of airfare, hotel, taxis, food, consultants, an urgency fee, and the passport itself came to $872 dollars. But that isn’t the worst part. It was actually much more expensive than that because it used up 24 hours of my time and the time of the THREE Canadian references that the government forces you to provide. I arrived at the passport office at 7:30 am this morning and left at 3:45 pm this afternoon. This huge time sink included talking with 3 security guards, 1 notary, 1 consultant, and 5 passport Canada officials.
The people working at passport Canada in Vancouver were very polite and much more helpful than the people at the Canadian consulate in San Francisco, but it was still a huge expenditure of effort for something that shouldn’t be so difficult. Or expensive.