Why? Why is the Canadian government so completely inefficient?!? WHY?!?!?
Earlier this year, I planned a trip to Thailand. Thailand requires that your passport be valid for 6 months upon entry. Fine. My current passport was going to expire before then. So, I needed to renew it. Well, because it wasn’t already obvious from my CURRENT and VALID passport that I am a Canadian citizen (for real), Canada requires that I also have my Canadian citizenship card to issue an updated passport. Apparently, THE EXACT DOCUMENT THAT PROVES I AM A CANADIAN CITIZEN (my passport) IS NOT PROOF THAT I AM A CANADIAN CITIZEN. Huh? Brain aneurysm! Did you get that?!
Well, I lost my citizenship card. It was made when I was 11 and really, was I going to carry that thing everywhere I went for the rest of my life?! Things get lost, people misplace things, they move across 3 continents over the course of 2 years and YES, SOMETIMES things (like little plastic cards) slip through the crack. So. Fine. Citizenship card lost. OK, no big deal, right? WRONG! There is some magical place in Canada that produces these golden tickets. And that’s the only place you can apply for them. And do you know how long it takes to process a stupid little laminated card?!?!? ONE YEAR! 12 MONTHS. 52 WEEKS. 365 DAYS. 8736 HOURS. 524 160 MINUTES! 300 MILLION YEARS! WHYYYYY?!?!? How many monkeys does it take to laminate a stupid card?!?! Apparently a freaking factory line of bureaucratic robot zombies.
So, it’s March. I am leaving for Thailand in May. I am in London. I’ve called every embassy and yes the citizenship card is required to prove that I am a citizen (really, they should just implant chips in our bodies like they do with dogs. Wouldn’t that be easier?!). Obviously I haven’t yet heard from the government about the status of the card because it takes 300 million years to get anything done. I go to the Canadian embassy at Trafalgar Square and the only thing they can do for me is to renew the passport an additional 9 months. OH THANK YOU OH GREAT PEOPLE AT THE PASSPORT OFFICE. WHAT AN AMAZING FAVOUR YOU HAVE BESTOWED UPON ME. I COULD KISS YOUR FEET (my arse!). It is extended until January 2010. I go to Thailand.
And I travel every single weekend for the next 4 months.
Well now I’m somewhere for more than just a few days. I’m in SF. And I need to extend it. I am going to Argentina and the Philippines and they too require that your passport be valid for 6 months upon exit. Well, CANADA won’t renew my passport further. They would rather create a new passport even though I have a billion pages still free for stamps. They want to kill trees and hire 300 monkeys to put together another passport. Makes so much sense right?!
FINE.
We call the Canadian embassy in SF. ALL CANADIAN PASSPORT RENEWALS MUST BE SENT TO CANADA. FULL STOP. Nobody in the US is processing passport renewals onsite. AND do you know how long that takes?! 8 to 10 weeks. 300 million years! And, no, it is not laziness. I haven’t been in one place more than 5 days in the last 3 months. THERE WAS JUST NO WAY. And I so naively thought that being here, in the US, where there is an abundance of Canadian consulates and embassies and whatevers, would be an easier place to get this ridiculous document sorted.
I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW. Seeing as I leave the country in four weeks, it is so lovely to know that I have all these great options.
Efficiency at its finest.
