Purley

I was bitching to a friend about how you cannot renew a Canadian passport - you have to get a new one every time and go through the whole rigamorole all over again. You have to provide a birth certificate every time, even though you hand in your old passport and you haven't changed your birth date since then.

He sent me this - he got in as an email shortly after I complained to him - thought you guys might enjoy it!

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

I'm in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this.

How is it that Radio Shack has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a t.v. Cable from them back in 1997, and yet, the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date.

For crying out loud, do you guys do this by hand? My birth date, you have on my social insurance card, on all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30 years, my health insurance card, my driver's licence, on the last eight bloody passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done at election times.

Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother's name is Yvonne, my father's name is Frank and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die!

I apologize, Mr. Minister. I'm really ticked off this morning. Between you an' me, I've had enough! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my freakin' address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthals workin' there?! Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for crying out loud. I just want to go and park my butt on a sandy beach. And would someone please tell me, why would you care whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days?! If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a chicken or a goat, believe you me, I'd sure as hell not want to tell anyone!

Well, I have to go now, 'cause I have to go to the other end of the city and get another bloody copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of $60! Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day?? Nooooo, that'd be too easy! You'd rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some bozo to confirm that it's really me on the stupid picture - you know, the one where we're not allowed to smile?! Hey, you know why we can't smile? We're ticked off!

printer

Very good

Souvenir

Love it

This stupidity reminds of when, several years back, it was decided that Quebec birth certificates issued before a certain date were no longer valid as proof of Canadian citizenship and had to be renewed at the bearers' cost. I think it was a post 9/11 thing.

You would not have wanted to be the government official who answered the telephone call from my missus, I can tell you. Oh no.

I can still chuckle at my experience obtaining a SIN card. I had arrived and landed two days earlier.

"Hello. I'm a new arrival in Canada and would like to get a SIN number".

"Sure, dear. Just fill out this form and hand over your birth certificate etc".

"OK".

"That's not a birth certificate".

"Yes it is; it says so on the top".

"It's not a Canadian birth certificate".

"Let's start this again, shall we?".

NewWorldMan

Looks like that official had a 'solitude' all of her own !!!

wonderwoman

PMSL, I bet the look on your face was priceless, i think i must have skipped over the bit about 'needing to have been born in Canada to emigrate there' on the cic website

Craftybanshee

Mawhahaha!

printer

Very good.

Reminds me of a conversation i had recently with my credit card company, i had tried to use the automated phone service to select a 4 digit number as my password so i could use their online services and it transfered me to an operator. The conversation went like this:

"hello sir could you confirm your name and address"

"Thank you, now could you confirm your date of birth"

"Yes it's 3.3.64"

"Thank you now could you confirm the 4 digit number you have selected"

Yes it's 1989"

"Thank you sir, i just need to confirm that number you gave me isn't your date of birth is it?""
Er no"

Alberta_Rose

Too funny!

I just showed the passport bit to my builder who seems to have taken up residence in our basement. He was just complaining of the very same thing when we went over to Home Depot this week to pick up my new bathtub.

He wants to take his wife and dozen or so children to Mexico in January. He didn't seem to get it when my hubby remarked "Oh you do get home sometimes then!"

I was telling him about the UK system, where you just send you old passport with a cheque and a form, and they send you a new one .... and it lasts ten years, not five as in Canada. I mean the UK has twice as many people don't they? and they manage to cope, and I expect a much higher proportion have passports too, as so many leave the tiny island for their hols.....

Purley

I am going to send the joke and Morwenna's comment about UK passports to my MP. After all he might as well have something to do to earn his money.

AnyaT

Actually I believe all Western countries, or at least the English-speaking ones, have passports that last for 10 years. Canada is the only one where you have to go through this rigamarole every 5 years, and it really ticks me off - just seems like another government money grab.

Souvenir

Hardly surprising. Something like 10% of Canada's total population is employed by the public sector. The money to pay them has to come from somewhere.

Purley

I hate to say this - seeing this is a website to sort of encourage people to come to Canada - but when I was applying for my UK pension, I had reason to phone the pension office. In my job I had to phone the Canadian Pension office all the time. It nearly drove me NUTS - you had to listen to a 10 minute dirge about when your pension had been sent out and when you could complain if you didn't receive it -- and then after that you got press 1 , press 2 etc. etc. -- p*ss off - I am trying to find something out in connection with a deceased person's estate!!!

Now when I phoned the UK pension office in Newcastle - I nearly dropped dead. I real person answered the phone. I did not have to press any buttons. This person was very helpful and answered all my questions.

Am I wrong - does Canada have the most wasteful, difficult and annoying civil servants in the civilized world? Probably in the uncivilized world too!

JAJ

New Zealand recently reduced passport validity from 10 years to 5. There is talk the UK may follow suit, but nothing concrete yet.

The reason for the reduction is to ensure passports stay up to date technologically.

montreal mike

The instances of mindless bureaucracy mentioned above remind me of the time we left this province (Quebec) for Ottawa and returned a year later. As a family we had to re-apply for our medicare cards. We had to provide birth certificates, passports, proof of residence in the form of a valid lease.

Funnily enough we had had these cards for ages but we had to re-apply as if we had just arrived in the province.

When I asked why we were told, rather unconvincingly, it was all for security purposes so as to help detect potential fraud.

Go figure!