With only days left before her trip, and without her son's passport, Ottawa traveller Dianna Chepita wondered if it was even worth it to travel.
"We were not excited about this trip at all," Chepita told CTV National News. "For the last week or so, I just couldn't bring myself to be excited. Preparing, yes, but no excitement."
Chepita had begun the process of renewing her children's passports back in February, sending the applications by mail, and only received her son's on Wednesday.
"And our trip is on Saturday," she said.
Her experience will sound familiar to many Canadians, some of whom have reported waiting in long lines at passport offices as the federal government deals with a resurgence in applications.
After issuing only 363,000 passports between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, Employment and Social Development Canada, which oversees Service Canada, says this rose to nearly 1.3 million over the following year.
Service Canada also is dealing with tens of thousands more calls, with more than 200,000 received daily up from about 5,000 prior to the pandemic.
The high call volumes come as provinces and territories have loosened many of their pandemic restrictions in recent months. The federal government also eased more border measures as of Monday.
As of April 18, Employment and Social Development Canada said the average processing time for passports was five business days if applying at a specialized passport site and 25 if applying at a Service Canada Centre or by mail.
After many calls, and a visit to a passport office less than a week before her trip, Chepita says she believes her persistence helped her get her son's passport in the end.
"I feel very fortunate to have it and I'm also very grateful that my instincts told me to just keep advocating for myself and my son, and not really trust the process but fight for it," she said.
The batteries of the walkie-talkies used by Lebanese armed group Hezbollah that blew up this week were laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN, a Lebanese source familiar with the device's components told Reuters.
The federal firearm buyback program has cost taxpayers nearly $67.2 million since it was announced in 2020, but it still hasn't collected a single gun.
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B.C.'s police watchdog is investigating the death of a woman who was shot by the RCMP after allegedly barricading herself in a room with a toddler early Thursday morning.
B.C.'s police watchdog is investigating the death of a woman who was shot by the RCMP after allegedly barricading herself in a room with a toddler early Thursday morning.
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The 'Namgis First Nation says a fish farm it owns near Port McNeill shows the potential of land-based aquaculture in B.C.
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The Progressive Conservatives have won a provincial byelection in eastern Ontario to hold onto a seat previously held by a popular cabinet minister.
The province's public security minister said he was "shocked" Thursday amid reports that a body believed to be that of a 14-year-old boy was found this week near a Hells Angels hideout near Quebec City.
Premier François Legault's approval rating continued to rise this summer, according to the Angus Reid Institute. After reaching a low at the end of 2023, his support rose by three percentage points over the summer to 39 per cent.
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Gas prices increased in all three Maritime provinces for the first time in more than a month.
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tapped Treasury Board President Anita Anand to take on additional duties as Canada's minister of transport on Thursday.
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Ontario’s Minister of Sport, Neil Lumsden, will donate his brain to research.
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Lebanese authorities on Thursday banned walkie-talkies and pagers from being taken on flights from Beirut airport, the National News Agency reported, after thousands of such devices exploded during a deadly attack on Hezbollah this week.
If something looks too good to be true, it might be. That's the message from Saskatchewan horticulturists after customers have come into their stores hoping to buy purple apple trees this month.
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Viewers of Jeopardy got a chance to test their knowledge of trivia about B.C.'s biggest city Wednesday night.
British actress Florence Pugh has revealed that shaving her head for her latest movie role was a 'really bizarre' experience that sent her body 'into a bit of trauma.'
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Nike Inc. said Thursday it has named Elliott Hill as its president and CEO, replacing John Donahoe, who will retire next month.
Maple Leaf Foods asserted its innocence in an alleged bread price-fixing scheme ahead of a hearing to determine whether it will be added to an ongoing class-action lawsuit.
They say a dog is a man’s best friend. In the case of Darren Cropper, from Bonfield, Ont., his three-year-old Siberian husky and golden retriever mix named Bear literally saved his life.
Trips can make lifelong memories when they go off without a hitch, but cancellations and rescheduled events are common because of artist illnesses, poor ticket sales, security threats, unruly weather and natural disasters.
For most people, dinner on a cruise ship is a time to relax. But when influencer couple Abby and Matt Howard decided to kick back with a dinner à deux, they ended up kicking up a storm.
Shohei Ohtani became the first major league player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season, with the Los Angeles Dodgers star going deep twice to reach the half-century mark and swiping two bags to get to 51 against the Miami Marlins on Thursday.
Vancouver Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko says he's been working his way back from a rare lower-body muscle injury since being sidelined in last season's playoffs.
Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette returned to the 10-day injured list Thursday due to a right middle finger fracture.
An Ontario man says it is 'unfair' to pay a $1,500 insurance surcharge because his four-year-old SUV is at a higher risk of being stolen.
Video of a brazen daylight auto theft which shows a suspect running over a victim in a stolen luxury SUV has been released by police west of Toronto.
The plant was expected to produce batteries for a million electric vehicles a year. Once up and running, it was supposed to create hundreds of permanent jobs in a small southeastern Ontario municipality. But two years later, spending on the construction of the Umicore plant has been delayed in what the company calls a "significant worsening of the EV market context."
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