- CRA contact-centre wait — how long taxpayers wait to reach the CRA contact centre.
- Immigration processing times — how long IRCC takes against its own service standards.
- Veterans benefit backlog — wait times for veterans' disability-benefit decisions.
- Healthcare wait times — waits for medical treatment in international context.
- Public service size — how much the federal public service grew over the past decade, and how fast.
Most metrics in this tool compare Canada to its G7 peers. This one cannot: no comparable country publishes passport-processing performance against a published service standard on a like-for-like basis, and even the documents differ. Chip versus booklet, in-person versus mail, business days versus calendar days. An international league table would be apples-to-oranges. But Service Canada does something better for accountability. It states a target (90% of complete applications within 10 business days in person, or 20 by mail), reports its own score each year, and, as of April 2026, refunds the fee when it misses by enough. So the test of "does government deliver?" applies almost literally: the promise is public, and so is the scorecard.
The cleanest delivery test is Service Canada's own: what share of complete passport applications was processed within the published service standard, and did it clear the 90% target the department sets for itself? The answer swings violently year to year. Attainment cratered to 70% in 2022-23 as demand outran capacity, snapped back to 92% in 2023-24 once the backlog cleared, slipped to 78% in 2024-25 on inventory carried over from a January 2024 surge, then rebounded to 99% year-to-date in 2025-26. The standard has been a moving target the system keeps catching, losing, and catching again.
The performance swings are inseparable from volume. The ten-year passport-renewal cycle and the post-pandemic travel rebound drove volume from roughly 1.3 million passports issued in 2021-22 to 3.3 million passports processed in 2022-23, then to 4.8 million applications in 2023-24 (a near-50% jump in a single year) and to 5.24 million applications in 2024-25. Each time attainment recovered, it did so while the underlying volume kept climbing. The swings track a service repeatedly racing a rising tide of demand.
That framing also sets the bar for the new guarantee. From 1 April 2026, if a complete application takes more than 30 business days to process, the fee is automatically refunded. It is the first time Service Canada has attached a financial consequence to missing its passport standard. On the current 99% reading the guarantee should rarely trigger. But the 2024-25 relapse is the reason it matters: the system has shown it can slip below target inside twelve months when volume surges, and the guarantee converts that risk from an applicant's problem into the department's.
As of May 2025, 99% of complete applications were processed within the 10- or 20-business-day standard, against a 90% target. After the 2022 collapse, the passport line is now one of the better-performing federal services on its own published benchmark.
Attainment ran 70% (2022-23) → 92% (2023-24) → 78% (2024-25) → 99% (2025-26 YTD). Two of the last four years missed the 90% target. The system slips below standard within a single year when demand surges, then claws back. The pattern is recovery, not stability.
Volume climbed from ~1.3M passports issued (2021-22) to 5.24M applications (2024-25), with a near-50% single-year jump to 4.8M in 2023-24. The 2024-25 dip to 78% traced to out-of-standard inventory carried over from a January 2024 surge. Capacity is the binding constraint.
From 1 April 2026, processing past 30 business days triggers an automatic full fee refund, the first hard financial backstop on the passport standard. It should rarely fire at 99% attainment, but the 2024-25 relapse is exactly why it exists.
Passport processing met its standard 78% of the time in 2024-25, below the 90% target, after 92% the year before. Early FY2025-26 readings are back at 99%.
- Compared with
- Canada's own attainment in earlier fiscal years (70% in 2022-23, 92% in 2023-24, and 78% in 2024-25), with Service Canada's 90% target as the published standard.
- Where Canada sits
- The latest reading is 99% within standard, against a 90% target. The last full year, 2024-25, was 78%, below target.
- Which way it is moving
- Mixed. Attainment swung from 70% in 2022-23 to 92%, then 78%, then 99% year-to-date. The latest move is an improvement, but two of the last four years missed the target.
- What the verdict follows
- Canada's own record, judged on full fiscal years. The 99% covers only the start of FY2025-26 to 11 May 2025, so it cannot carry the verdict alone. On full years, 78% is better than 70% in 2022-23 but down from 92%, a mixed record, so Watch.
- Data basis
- ESDC Question Period Note, Passport Service Delivery Update (SC_JUN2025_010, May 2025), ESDC State of Service report 2025, and ESDC Departmental Results Reports. Data current to FY2025–26 to 11 May 2025. Page last reviewed June 2026.
Primary sources
- ESDC, Question Period Note — Passport Service Delivery Update (ref. SC_JUN2025_010, May 2025) — the annual attainment series: FY2022-23 70%, FY2023-24 92%, FY2024-25 78%, FY2025-26 99% year-to-date; the 90% / 10-or-20-business-day standard (in effect since July 2013). The spine of the attainment chart.
- ESDC, State of Service report 2025 (backgrounder) — passport volumes: 3.3M processed (2022-23), 4.8M (2023-24, +~50%), up to 5.4M expected (2024-25); the 90% / 92% FY2023-24 attainment.
- ESDC, Departmental Results Report (FY2024-25 / FY2023-24) — FY2024-25 actual applications received (5,236,840) against a 5.2-5.7M forecast.
- IRCC/ESDC, Canada begins new "30 days or free" guarantee for passport processing (31 Mar 2026) — the money-back guarantee, effective 1 April 2026.
- CBC News (2022) — corroborates the 2022 demand-crisis context (overnight line-ups, six-hour waits, 808,000+ applications Apr-Jun 2022). Used for narrative context, not as the performance series.
Methodology notes
- Definitions. The service standard is Service Canada's published commitment: 90% of complete applications processed within 10 business days (in person at a specialized/expedited site) or 20 business days (mail, regular Service Canada Centre, online, outreach), in effect since July 2013. Attainment is the share actually processed within that standard in a period, as reported by ESDC. Processing time runs from receipt of a complete application to printing and verification of the passport; it excludes mailing time and additional security verifications.
- No peer comparison, by design. Unlike most metrics here, there is no clean G7 series: comparable countries do not publish passport-processing performance against a published service standard on a like-for-like basis, and document type (chip vs booklet), channel (in-person vs mail), and day basis (business vs calendar) all differ. The page therefore benchmarks Canada against its own published standard and the 90% target it sets for itself. No flags appear because no country comparison is drawn.
- Year-to-date vs full-year close. FY2022-23, FY2023-24, and FY2024-25 are full fiscal-year figures. FY2025-26 (99%) is a year-to-date reading as of 11 May 2025 and is marked distinctly (◇) on the chart. It is not spliced into the full-year series as if equivalent.
- Two standards kept separate. The attainment % is measured against the 10-/20-business-day service standard throughout. The new 30-business-day money-back guarantee (live 1 April 2026) is a separate, additional backstop, not the benchmark the % series is scored against. They are not spliced.
- Volume basis. Years mix "applications received" and "passports processed/issued" as the source reported them (e.g. 3.3M processed in 2022-23 vs 4.8M applications in 2023-24). Columns are labelled by basis; where only one basis is published, that basis is shown.
- Companion workbook. The editable series live in Governing_Passport-Processing_Data.xlsx: the service standard, annual attainment, annual volumes, the 2022 crisis context, and the money-back guarantee. Only series the workbook contains are charted.
