As Service Canada reports a surge in demand for passports, people are advertising to offer to stand in line for people who don’t want to wait when they apply for the travel document.
As Toronto sees hours-long waits outside passport offices, ads are appearing online offering “line-standing” services for a fee.
Service Canada spokesperson Saskia Rodenburg confirmed, in an email, the government agency is seeing a “significant increase in [passport application] volumes.”
Service Canada issued almost 1.3 million passports between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022, according to Rodenburg. That’s 3.5 times the approximately 363,000 passports Rodenburg said Service Canada issued the twelve months before.
The increase in demand has inspired some Torontonians to charge hundreds of dollars for standing in line for applicants so they don’t have to.
A Facebook Marketplace vendor is charging $280 to wait in passport lineswriting “if it takes me from open to close, I’m committed.”
A Kijiji user in Peel charges a minimum of $30 per hour to stand in line.
Service Canada is not expecting the demand for passports to dissipate soon. Rodenburg said in the email that, during March and April, taken together, Service Canada received almost 500,000 passport applications.
To deal with the demand, Service Canada hired 500 people to help process applications, Rodenburg said.
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