I spent the past six weeks dealing with an unexpected identity crisis.
Oh, not philosophically, I’m fine. It was a practical issue—this spring most of my document-issued IDs were about to expire or had already expired.
It all started when I dropped off my passport renewal application and Mark’s. At one point, I had to produce a piece of ID.
“There you go,” I said, offering my driver’s licence.
The Service Canada employee glanced at it.
“I’m sorry, I can’t take it. It’s expired.”
Feng and I looked over the blue card. Damn. She was right. It expired on March 21, 2023.
And since March 21 is my birthday, I must have been reading the expiry date as my birthday all along. Also, wasn’t I supposed to get a renewal notice by mail?
Never mind. Feng handed out his driver’s licence to complete Mark’s passport application process.
Crisis averted… and now, two unexpected urgent matters to deal with.
Renewing my driver’s licence
Once home, I checked my health card’s expiry date—no surprise, March 21, 2023, as well.
In Ontario, both documents are valid for five years and they expire on your birthday because at one point, during a provincial government meeting, someone decided that nothing says “happy birthday” like a renewal chore.
A quick Google search confirmed that I hadn’t missed the two-month notice—ServiceOntario stopped mailing them out during COVID. Of course, paper reminders never returned, presumably because of the economy, the war in Ukraine and global warming, the handy explanation for pretty much anything these days—don’t you dare question the logic.
Now you have to sign up for renewal notice by email, text message or phone call.
Passports are issued by the federal government but driver’s licence and health cards are provincial responsibilities. The easy option was to renew my driver’s licence and health card online. Perfect, right? But after entering all the required information, I was informed I had to go to a ServiceOntario centre.
I tried renewing just my driver’s licence. This time I completed the process successfully and I was issued a temporary driver’s licence. “Your new driver’s licence card will arrive in the mail within 4 to 6 weeks.”
Renewing my health card
I went to the nearest centre inside the Westgate Shopping Centre. This is one of these tiny old-style malls hanging by a thread and it looked completely dead except for one place—ServiceOntario.
Dozens of people were standing around the door, sitting on the floor or pacing the walkway.
Great, just great.
I grabbed a number—“H29.”
“It goes up until 100 and then it reset,” another desperate applicant told me.
“I have G85,” she added. “And I’ve been there for about… three hours.”
I waited for a couple of hours and gave up at H05.
The next day, Feng drove me to another ServiceOntario centre at the Ottawa City Hall. It was packed, no way I could have renewed my card before Mark’s pickup time.
It took me several hours of queuing every single day for a week to finally get my health card renewed. Holy shit.
Why didn’t I book an appointment online? Ah, ah, because there were none available in May or June.
The French IDs ordeal
I’d love to claim that France handles applications and renewals much better but since we’re talking about bureaucracy here, obviously not.
The French embassy in Ottawa no longer handles passport and carte d’identité applications and renewals. The consulate in Montreal accepts applications for French residents in Quebec but in Ontario, we have to go to Toronto. Since it requires two separate trips months apart—to drop off the application and pick up the documents issued in France—and considering the consulate’s opening hours are like “come the day before a full moon between 9:12 and 10:03,” my carte d’identité is expired. This is also why Mark doesn’t have French IDs, and most of my friends are in the same boat.
I could technically renew my IDs in France but since COVID, it’s impossible to get an appointment. All major cities no longer take applications because the backlog is huge so desperate French have to apply in small towns, sometimes across the country—and even then, finding an appointment is like winning the lottery.
It’s just crazy. I mean, people need passports, IDs, driver’s licences… I’m sure governments can do the math—with documents expiring every five or ten years, it shouldn’t be too hard to estimate the number of potential applicants for any given year. When will they stop using COVID as an excuse? Neither France nor Canada was in full lockdown for three years!
How about you? Are your IDs still valid? Any issue with renewals or applications?
Au Québec c’est relativement bien fait à ce niveau. Par contre il m’est arrivé de ne pas recevoir le courrier de renouvellement donc je vérifie quand même régulièrement les dates. Mais je me souviens qu’une fois, mon chum se trouvait chez le médecin et sa carte n’était plus valide (c’est quand il a changé de statut de résident je pense), et la secrétaire médicale lui a dit « vous avez dix minutes avant votre rendez vous, appelons la RAMQ et ils vont nous régler ça. Et effectivement quelques minutes après, la clinique recevait un fax confirmant sa nouvelle couverture. Ça m’avait fasciné. Contrairement à toi, je ne clame jamais que la partie administrative est meilleure en France. D’une part pcque je les trouve relativement efficaces au Québec. D’autre part parce que tout ce que j’ai eu à faire en France, par le passé ou récemment, était toujours un casse tête invraisemblable. Tous les systèmes sont désuets, plusieurs villes fonctionnent encore exclusivement avec du papier, les délais sont longs, les demandes improbables (je pense à ces parents comme ma belle sœur qui doivent remplir des fiches de plusieurs pages pour le système scolaire pour chacun de leurs enfants, avec toujours les mêmes questions, sans que rien ne soit automatisé, et ce même si tu restes dans la même école – à contrario nous un système informatique nous demande si notre situation a changé, et si on dit non on peut juste valider).
This is kind of what I was saying, I wasn’t claiming the Frenh system is more efficient: “I’d love to claim that France handles applications and renewals much better but since we’re talking about bureaucracy here, obviously not.”
That said, I find it really weird that in both countries (Ontario in my case), getting IDs is crazy long and complicated. This was like my third or fourth health card and drer’s licence renewal in Ontario and I definitely didn’t have to queue for hours before. Feng faced the same issue when his documents expired last year.
Sorry, read to quickly and missed the ‘d. I thought you had had good experiences in the past with French administration and that it could have been bc of the location. In beautiful Auvergne, we still miss some modern things haha. But yes, I did notice the same as you. Lately, everything seems lower, more crowded, less people to do the service and so on.
Oh, trust me, I’m still traumatized from dealing with the CROUS when I was a student 😆
I did notice an improvement in the past few years though with France Connect and online services.
For the French passport, you can do it in one trip since they will mail it to you when it’s ready. That’s what I did in November to avoid a second trip just to pick it up. As for the carte d’identité, I gave up renewing it. The old one is expired and… I somehow lost it! (I don’t know how because I’m pretty organized for that kind of thing). But since I don’t live in France (and don’t plan to), I don’t really need it. Even the guy at the consulate told me it’s not very useful for French citizens living overseas. (Oh shit, I just realized that my drivers license is expired!)
Oh, thank you, this is good to know! For some reason I was assuming (or I had been told) I had to pick it up as well. How long did it take for you to get yours?
Good luck with the licence… you should be able to renew it online unless your health card also expired.
Thank you to you as well, my Ontario driver’s license (and my husband’s too!) are now renewed. It was pretty easy.
For the French passport, you need to be registered at the consulate and give them a prepaid envelope when you renew the passport for them to mail it to you when it arrives. I think the delay was about a month. Then you’ll have to confirm the reception of the passport through the French government website (service public). It’s all written in the Consulate’s website. Good luck.
Yay for driver’s licence renewal! I must admit I was kind of hoping I’d prompt everyone to check their document’s expiry date after reading this post. I’m usually on top of paperwork (because it’s a chore and I’ve learned life is just so much easier when you do what’s required when it’s required) but I totally missed this one. I was so used to mail reminders… I signed up for digital reminders now. At least for my driver’s licence for some reason I get an error message when I try to sign up for health card renewal reminders but it doesn’t matter since both expire at the same time.
FYI getting the driver’s licence in the mail was much quicker than they said, exactly two weeks.
I’m the same with paperwork. I prefer to get everything done as soon as possible because I hate to have something pending. Yay for the driver’s license arriving earlier than planned, it was the same when I renewed the Canadian passport.
Maybe it’s due to our upbringing in bureaucratic countries 😆
This is Den Nation coming back from the dead… I’m still reading faithfully, but have been so embarrassed by my inactivity that I haven’t left a comment in ages … until now.
My passport is expiring tomorrow and I there is a six-month wait for a new one. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it would be like this. 10 years ago I went into the embassy without an appointment and came out of there 1 hour later with a new passport. Now there is a 6-month wait. I have completely given up on getting a new identity card because there are never any appointments when I sign in and try and get one. I just sent them an email to ask them why and then I saw this blog post here, what timing!
I thought this year would be ok because I figured last year was the ‘catch up’ year. Wishful thinking. Nothing is like before and I doubt is ever will be.
I am still living in Denmark after all these years and from tomorrow I will be stuck here for a few months because I can’t get a passport. Oh well, I guess there are worse things in life and Denmark’s not a bad country to be prisoner in.
Well, hello stranger! I’m happy to see you again and yes, I remember you very well! 🙂
OMG for the passport wait time. That sucks. It wasn’t much faster for French IDs ten years ago but at least you could get an appointment easily, same for Canada.
Eh, maybe you will be surprised and it will be quicker. Both of my Ontario IDs were mailed faster than announced.
I find that it’s easier to get an appointment if you try in the middle of the night—this was my (successful) strategy to get COVID vaccine appoint. in 2021 and it worked as well to get various ID appointments in France. Maybe it,s worth giving it a shot if there’s some kind of online booking plateform?
What have you been up to? (General life question, not ID related :lol:)
Wow… just wow!!
Mine is still good I think(though now I’m going to go check later…). My Ivorian passport is expired and I will go home next year to renew it. Funny thing is I don’t use it anymore, but I guess I want to do it for sentimental reasons.
It’s always good to have two passports! You never know… I was glad I had a valid French passport during COVID for instance, I needed it to travel to France where the borders were technically closed.
Frikkin’ scheiße.
The imm5444f cannot be open on Android, and even on different computers it didn’t work, even with the latest version of Acrobat Reader. I’m so much pissed right now. I finalle had someone to convert it to a regular pdf, but RHÂÂÂAAAAAA !!!!!!!
I’m pissed off on your behalf. My biggest grip is multi-factor authentication, which is often an issue if I’m not in Canada (or France) and using a local SIM card.
The paperwork to renew my card is all done except for this imm5444. I have to find a computer somewhere. I have an idea. We’ll see.
No, you can’t storm into Best Buy and claim you’re rioting like in France.
(;-))