Videos are emerging of brutal lineups forming at Service Canada offices across the country as Canadians wait to renew their passports following the suspension of the unvaccinated travel ban.
Videos show that waiting lines are so bad that people are bringing lawn chairs — and often giving up before reaching the door.
“Imagine having a passport office with 16 wickets, and literally four are open. Four. People are waiting for hours and hours, ongoing for months, but Service Canada apparently hasn’t hired contract staff to help clear the backlog,” a frustrated Canadian tweeted.
As Senator Leo Housakos notes, “This is the lineup for passports at my local Service Canada in Montreal. It’s not isolated — it’s a daily occurrence being repeated all across the country. [Do] you think this is acceptable, MP Sean Fraser, MP Karina Gould? We’re a G7 country, act like it. Canada deserves better.”
A video posted by Senator Housakos shows hundreds of people wrapped around the plaza — across grocery stores, Dollarama, and a movie theatre. People can be seen sitting with their heads buried in their hands or lost in their phones as if they haven’t moved in hours.
In fact, some folks are waking up in the middle of the night to try and get a good spot in the line. It resembles a scene outside a video game store at 3 am, wherein gamers camp out, so they don’t miss out – except in this game, winners get to leave Canada.
Granted, this problem has been growing for months. However, it appears that the wait for passports has reached a tipping point now that Canada’s supreme leader has suspended his vindictive and unconstitutional travel ban on unvaccinated Canadians.
As previously reported by The Counter Signal, on June 14, the Trudeau government announced they would suspend the travel ban on the over 5.7 million unvaccinated Canadians temporarily after more than half a year of rampant discrimination.
With that said, those who aren’t fully vaccinated — which will soon include those with two shots or less — might still be out of luck no matter how early they line up. After all, the Trudeau government’s use of the word “suspension” when referring to the travel ban indicates it could be re-instated anytime.
