Americans can now renew their passports online, the U.S. government announced Wednesday — a service Canadians are still waiting for more than a year after it was promised.
The U.S. State Department said its online renewal system is now fully operational, after successfully testing it in pilot programs this summer. It will be available to adults whose passports have expired within the past five years or will expire in the coming year, but not for new passport applications, children’s passports, or renewals outside the U.S.
“By offering this online alternative to the traditional paper application process, the Department is embracing digital transformation to offer the most efficient and convenient passport renewal experience possible,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
The department said it estimated that about five million Americans would be able to use this service a year.
Ottawa announced in May 2023 that starting that fall, Canadians with simple passport renewals would be able to apply online, pay fees and upload the necessary documents and passport photos on a secure government website.
But the season came and went without an announcement or any change to the passport renewal website, which still allows only renewal applicants to choose in-person or mail-in applications.
A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) wouldn’t provide a timeline for when the service will be available when asked by Global News.
“Online passport renewals are not available at this time; however, the Government of Canada is committed to offering secure online passport service options for Canadians in the near future,” a spokesperson said in an email Wednesday.
In November, when Global News asked IRCC for an update, a spokesperson said in an email that the department was “working on” launching an online passport renewal service “that is secure and protects data privacy.”
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“We will proactively communicate when we have more information to share,” the spokesperson said at the time.
The department has not explained a reason for the delay.
During the May 2023 announcement that also saw officials unveil a new Canadian passport design, Karina Gould — then the social development minister, now the government House leader — said there had been “internal” pilot tests on the online renewal system and suggested they had been successful.
“We would never launch this project publicly until there is an assurance that those kinks have been worked through,” she said.
Canada, the U.S. and other countries faced pressure to revamp their passport services after pent-up demand and staffing shortages from the COVID-19 pandemic led to significant backlogs and wait times for applications.
Long lines and crowded waiting rooms also plagued passport offices and Service Canada Centres across the country, but the government was eventually able to reduce the backlog and said last January it was “virtually eliminated.” Service Canada now says it is meeting its service standards of delivering new passports within 10 to 20 days.
Gould said lessons learned from those pandemic-era delays, as well as ones created by a public service strike last spring, led to developing a digital renewal option.
“For people who are just doing a simple renewal of a valid passport, it will be a lot quicker and easier to process as well, because we already have that data in the system,” she said at the May 2023 press conference.
The U.S. State Department said Wednesday that most passport applications are now completed in far less than the advertised six weeks to eight weeks and the online renewal system is expected to further reduce that.
Assistant secretary of state for consular affairs Rena Bitter, whose bureau oversees passport processing, said the department hopes to expand the program in the coming years to possibly include Americans living abroad, those seeking to renew a second passport and children’s passports.
“This is not going to be the last thing that we do,” she told reporters. “We want to see how this goes and then we’ll start looking at ways to continue to make this service available to more American citizens in the coming months and years.”
— with files from Global’s Saba Aziz, the Canadian Press and the Associated Press
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