Ontario Just Got 2 New Passport Pickup Locations To Help With The Huge Backlog
Skip the huge lines at these new locations.
Canadian passport.
If you have travel plans and want to skip the excruciatingly long lines at passport offices, then there's some good news! Ontarians can now pick up their passports from two new locations in the Greater Toronto Area as of Monday.
To "help improve that service experience," the Government of Canada announced the opening of two offices located in Whitby at 1615 Dundas Street East and in Brampton at 40 Gillingham Drive.
"This expansion will allow many Canadians who need to pick up passports in person to do so closer to their homes, rather than travel to another office in their area," reads a press release from Employment and Social Development Canada.
"As we work to reduce the backlog and bring service standards back to normal, we will take every measure we can to make the experience better for Canadians, and make our services more accessible," it adds.
You'll also be able to check just how long those waits are by visiting the specific office website.
For example, at the time of publication on Monday, the estimated wait time at the Whitby location was 2 hours long. Over at the Brampton location, there was an approximately 2.5-hour wait.
Both offices are open Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Service Canada, which has 34 passport offices, reminds folks that "proof of travel is required for new application and status requests."
Last week, nearly 50,000 passports were issued to Canadians.
So, if you live in the GTA, skip that drive into Toronto and save on gas while you're at it!