Canada Doubles Passport Service Centers

The government of Canada has expanded passport services from 151 to more than 300 “Service Canada Centres,” providing Canadians with more options when applying for or renewing a passport, making it more convenient and accessible for Canadians to submit passport applications.

The expansion will result in over 97 percent of Canadians having access to passport services within a 100 km distance of their home. In 2016–17, Canada issued more than 4.8 million passports, a rate of approximately 19,000 passports a day.

Canadians applying for passports at a Service Canada Centre are able to submit their applications and have their citizenship documents, like birth certificates and certificates of citizenship, validated and returned to them while they are in the office. Service Canada Centres will also assist citizens with their standard passport application by reviewing it on site for completeness, accepting payment and forwarding it on for processing.

As of April 1, 2017, approximately 60% of Canadian adults held a valid Canadian passport.