I went to the Service Canada office in Burlington (Appleby) around 2.30 pm today, without an appointment and waited in line for approximately 45 mins. Got inside and was signed in by an agent for the passport application for my family(3 of us). Waited for another 15 minutes before an agent called us to his booth. He took our applications, photos, citizenship certificates, ids, daughter's birth certificate. They made copies of the citizenship certificates, ids and the birth certificate and returned the originals. After everything was entered into the system, we paid for the application and he printed out the application and payment receipts. The passports will be sent by registered mail and are expected in a month's time, though they might come earlier. 15 mins at the booth, making it a total of an hour and 15 minutes in total.
It was a seamless process. Even though there were people with the appointments and had priority, walk-ins were being allowed in based on how each person was being processed.