So many Canadians are scrambling to apply for passports that officials say you may have to wait up to two months to get the travel document.
The Passport Canada office is averaging 21,000 applications a day -- over 60 per cent more than the system is designed to handle, according to a report.
Passport Canada spokeswoman Francine Charbonneau told The Globe and Mail that if you haven't sent your application in yet, you won't get your passport in time for the fast-approaching holiday break.
"It's been tight," Charbonneau told the newspaper. "So if you haven't sent in your application yet, you're not going to get a passport back in time for March break."
Two hundred front-line officers were hired in November to handle the crush. In addition, the agency's two printing presses in Mississauga, Ontario, and Gatineau, Quebec are operating round-the-clock.
Passport Canada hasn't seen an influx of applications like this since the months following the Sept. 11, terror attacks, Charbonneau told The Globe. And even then, she said, the wait wasn't as long.
Passport officers have begun suggesting to panicked travellers who have already sent in their original documents to ask that the agency send their application and original birth certificate back to them.
The agency guarantees that if the person making the application pays for the cost of delivery, the documents will be sent back within 15 days.
Then, they can go into a passport office in person and ask for an urgent passport for another $70.
Or they can request a second birth certificate -- which could take as much as 15 days -- and take that with them into the passport office.
Under a new U.S. law that took effect Jan. 23, Canadians and Americans must show a passport when flying to the United States.
That requirement will extend to land-based travellers in 2009.
