“O.itemList.length” “- this.config.text.ariaShown
“This.config.text.ariaFermé”
Shelley Baker says she’s suing the federal government for violating her constitutional rights because she couldn’t renew her passport and therefore couldn’t go to Texas to take care of her family. Baker, 61, along with two other Canadian applicants, hope to argue that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects their right to leave the country for any explanation as to why and that Ottawa’s resolve to reject or limit passport facilities after March 19 is inexplicable why and illegal. Baker said he sought to spend the summer near Belton, an hour’s drive north of Austin, where his son-in-law, Brian Postell, is raising his six-year-old son. “My son-in-law is an army veteran and has fitness issues and when he was hit by COVID, he just needed more help at home,” he said. However, Baker’s passport expired in March and on March 19, Ottawa closed its Service Canada offices and passports in reaction to the pandemic.
Restricted program
The federal government then limited its passport program, processing only programs considered mandatory for urgent valid reasons.
According to the government’s online page on Monday, Canadians with urgent wishes can download passport facilities if:
suffer from a serious illness or will have to deal with the serious illness or death of another user with which you have been in a relationship;
experience financial difficulties due to loss of employment or activity (the charge of a plane, bus or exercise price ticket is not an economic conjerito);
or you will have to travel on humanitarian grounds, with that of the requesting organization.
When Baker learned there was no way to renew his passport in person, he contacted the passport program over the phone.
Reapply rejected
He tried to have his grandson have cochlear implants and that his circle of relatives had other medical tensions and that he could have used his help to care for Landon, aged six, while the school and day care were closed during the summer. Baker said his statement was rejected. “The criterion was that the traveling user or his circle of relatives at the other end had to be critical, as a scenario of imminent death,” he said.
“I wasn’t in that category. Then, from then on, I had to tell my circle of relatives that I couldn’t go.”
Baker. with Sonia Faye of Ontario and Diane Smith of Alberta, they are represented through James Kitchen, a lawyer at the Justice Center for Constitutional Liberties.
Essential passport
Kitchen states that the letter protects the right of each and every Canadian citizen to enter, stay and leave Canada and that a passport is essential to exercise that right.
Knowledge of the application, which was filed in the Federal Court of Calgary on July 27, indicates that mobility rights are similarly shared among all Canadian citizens, that the reasons why they wish are considered more “essential” or “valid” than others.
Kitchen told CBC that a temporary interruption of passport service could have been understandable given the pandemic, but has now been corrected.
“It’s been more than months,” he says.
People whose passports expired in March, April or May, who tried to renew their passports, were unable to do so. Until the end of July, they wouldn’t even have had to submit their request and would expect it to be processed at any time. “
Not provided
Kitchen said Ottawa has figured out how to do things remotely, such as processing thousands of CERB applications.
No explanation was given as to why the passport program was not adapted.
“When you arrive in July and August where we are now, the stage is neither excessive nor disastrous. This is not total chaos. If that were the case, other people wouldn’t go out to travel. We wouldn’t have flights abroad,” he added. he told me.
“There are many countries that settle for readers. There are many other people who need it for all sorts of non-public reasons, whether it’s to visit their families or to do things they’ve been waiting for.”
“This [passport program] came back online earlier in the spring and it wasn’t.
Kitchen stated that the federal government had yet submitted a reaction to his request to order the defendant, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada, to repair the general passport service on the user and by mail.
Kitchen said he expects the hearing to be held in line and last about a day.
He added that the Federal Court is effective and that the matter could be resolved in about six months.
Meanwhile, Baker says he expects to see his grandson.
She hopes to renew her passport as soon as the program returns to normal.
First, he says, he’ll have to take a passport photo because the last one’s already over.