Crowds flock to Fredericton passport office after long lines in Montreal
CBC
People lined up outside the Service Canada office in Fredericton on Friday morning, optimistic the wait to apply for a passport would be much shorter than in Montreal.
A day after François Gamache's publicized trip from Montreal to a short line in Fredericton to get a passport, David Nguyen and Vy Nguyen grabbed their dog and raced to New Brunswick from the east end of Montreal on the same mission.
Although they found a Fredericton passport office that was busier than usual, David Nguyen said the Montreal lines were much worse.
"It's so bad," he said. "It's like people are camping outside.The building was bigger than this one, and they were circling [it]."
The two friends drove eight hours to avoid the Montreal lineups — and many other Montrealers had the same idea.
WATCH | Why are Montrealers driving 8 hours to pick up passports in Fredericton?
Dozens of cars with Quebec plates filled the Service Canada parking lot in Fredereicton, and some had arrived as early as 3 a.m.
For Michael Haggerty, a Fredericton resident, it was a much shorter trip, and he picked up his passport successfully just on his lunch break.
"I stood in line for a couple of minutes because there's a bunch of people here from Quebec, but I waited to get in the door and then they just confirmed it was me and handed me my passport."
He scheduled an express passport appointment the last week, where he filled out paperwork and paid the fees.
"It was like a ghost town then. There were maybe six people. And when I walked in there today, there was a line up to get to the commissioner and to even get in the door. … The place is just packed with people."
Some of the Montrealers commended the service in Fredericton.
Vy Nguyen said even getting their passport a month before their planned trip was a nerve-wracking prospect, especially since her sister had to wait seven hours at the Montreal office to get one.
"[It's] too nervous to wait … the whole system doesn't make sense," said Vy Nguyen.
Current and former members of Laurentian University’s staff and faculty unions will receive cheques in the new year after paying into a retiree health benefits plan that the university spent on its operational and capital budgets instead.
Shopping local may be the desire, but affordability might decide where shoppers spend their money this Christmas season.
As classes across New Brunswick pause for the holidays, it’s not yet clear which schools are making a dent in chronic absenteeism — a stubborn post-pandemic trend that mostly afflicts the high school cohort, especially in the Anglophone West school district.
CBC Quebec has launched its Make the Season Kind campaign. It's our annual campaign that focuses on food insecurity, while also celebrating kindness, generosity and community spirit around the province.
Premier Wab Kinew says Manitoba will hold a public inquiry as soon as 2026 into the former Progressive Conservative government’s post-election efforts to approve an environmental licence for sand-mining company Sio Silica.
Premier Scott Moe has led the Saskatchewan Party through two straight elections, winning majority governments each time.
Eight weeks after adding a GM BrightDrop van to the fleet of his plumbing and heating business, Marty Salliss has no complaints, only praise.
Nearly half of Alberta’s Grade 6 students failed the provincewide math test in 2024, three years after the province started rolling out its new elementary school curriculum.
Toronto could get new cars on the road whose drivers will never get frustrated by gridlock — because the cars would be driving themselves.
Amidst a cost-of-living crisis, some London-area organizations say they have noticed a decline in donations this holiday season.
Prominent northern leaders have been touting the Arctic economic and security corridor as a "nation-building" project that will bring economic benefits to the two territories it straddles, but others are split on how much good will come out of it.
When the federal government tabled its 2025 budget last month, it included a proposal that tax fraud experts say is long overdue — if also a belated acknowledgement that the Canada Revenue Agency has been repeatedly duped into paying out untold millions in bogus tax refunds to scammers.
Talking with an AI chatbot can successfully convince people to change their votes and could affect the outcome of future elections, according to a new study.