I hope you get helped kmoser and that they give the passport without outright refusal. When applying for a Passport, the default would be to have a guarantor. The "weird" behaviour is probably just the officer trying not to be cynical. I mean you have lived in Canada for at least three years, become a citizen and don't know any other citizen that well that you can't ask them to vouch for you? That sort of thing. I would imagine 99% of people would fall into that category? They are essentially relying on an antiquated way of confirming that you are who you say you are. And so if you arrive at the Passport office without that, it would raise some eyebrows as to is this person 100% legitimate. With passport fraud and identity theft, its just another failsafe. I will admit that having some other mechanism like 2 photo id's and or other biometrics should be sufficient. That rule has (about guarantor) probably been around for ages, before biometrics. Is it fair or practical? some would argue no, its not. but its what is in place at the moment. I have found that Canada is very black and white and if you don't tick the box, there is very little room for out of the box thinking/discretion. We chose, after all, to be part of this great country. Its not perfect, but its a whole lot better than many other countries. Just my 2c.