Thanks for the share. However, lots of facts are missing, and it would be unfair to interpret this as laziness. It could be staffing shortage or the impact of covid situation still lingering. May 2022 should be compared to May 2019 as travel times (holidays kick start). The issue could be related to the backlog accumulated in the pandemic when double the number of applicants was received. You are not showing the Jan-April 2022 numbers, because if these are astronomical, even if the number of applicants of May 2022 reduce, you will still end up with delays from previous months.
No. I saw a short video of a parliament session; they said that they retained more than 90% of the passport staff during covid. Just like my other ATIP request where it shows Scarborough did not lose employees, yet became much slower. There is no staffing shortage at the government as they were all getting paid for doing nothing during covid19.
Also, no, the delays could not be related to any backlogs. They approved 233944 applications in January 2020, yet only 168605 in May 2022.
January: 130741 received, 122256 approved, compared to 257026 received and 233944 approved 2 years ago!
February: 178546 received, 133658 approved, compared to 213981 received and 226816 approved 2 years ago!
March: 284719 received, 169861 approved, compared to 108055 received and 150529 approved 2 years ago as they closed the borders too late.
April: 268368 received, 146586 approved.
It just proves that they constantly approve less applications than they did before covid19 because they became lazy and almost 50% less efficient!