Our passports expire February 2025. As you can't travel with a passport that has less than six months on it before it expires, figured we may as well get them renewed well ahead of time, in case there was a delay.
As we have a CAA membership we got our photo's taken there. Mine was free and hubby's was just over $10. So if you have a CAA membership make sure you take advantage of that.
We completed hubby's Canadian pension application online and the CPP was easy peasy!! The OAS though, was another matter. The word that comes to mind with that form was "ambiguous." The way they worded some of the questions was confusing. They also required copies of our marriage certificate and immigration papers.
Both the pension and passports applications required a visit to the dreaded Service Canada office. Now depending on where you live this could be an all day job. However we were warned ahead of time not to visit our local office due to the long lines, and go to another office a 50 minute drive from the house.
Believe me when I say it was well worth the 50 minute drive, as we were in and out in under half an hour. The person we dealt with was so nice and very thorough. It helped that we had all our paperwork filled out and we brought with us exactly what they needed.
I will say though I felt that $160 CDN each for a 10 year passport was a little pricy; but it's a need not a want in our case. They told us it would be back within the month; but it will probably be back sooner, or so I have been told by other people.
As for the pensions; we'll hear back hopefully in the next month or two is everything is good with the paperwork. As we don't need either of them to start until January of 2025, there is plenty of time to fix any issues that may arise.
Oh and a funny story about the passport photos. We were going to get our photos taken the week before, but I ended up with a spot/zit on the middle of my forehead for some reason. I took one look at it and told hubby there was no way on earth I was having a passport photo taken with that huge zit on my face, and having to look at my passport photo for the next 10 years and seeing that zit!!!
As it happened the photo I took is actually a good photo. Meanwhile hubby looks like an escaped convict. As I said to the lady, oh no, he's going to get stopped going through customs with that photo!! She just laughed and said yes!!
9 comments:
lol - poor hubby. Did he wear a striped T shirt too? ;-)
Good to get it all done and dusted and it reminds me, I must check mine. I don't plan to need it soon but better safe than sorry. xx
Ah thanks for the reminder about getting our passports renewed. Thankfully passports are federal so "Dougie" cannot put them into the convenience store or retail store. (LOL) $160.00 is a lot of money
Sounds like you have a lot happening in your life!
Hmmm, now you are making me think I should check our passports. We do have to travel quite a ways to get them renewed, so a full day would be in order. Glad your experience was good! -Jenn
$160 for a ten year passport is reasonable. It's the five year one that is pricy.
I haven't applied for my pension yet. Still need to find out one of our kids SIN. Unfortunately, I have no idea of what I'm getting as it's calculated separately the years that I stayed home.
I loathe Servus Canada and do everything by mail. Husband did his passport by mail and got it back in less than three weeks.
We've given up our passports because we have absolutely no plans to leave Canada, but we are facing a trip to Service Canada because DH is giving up driving and needs to apply for a Senior's photo ID card and then relinquish his license. Not looking forward to that ordeal one bit.
Hopefully all your applications will go smoothly!
Glad you managed to get the admin bits done. Hope things all go smoothly. I honestly don't really care what my photo looks like. The one on my current passport makes me look like I'm in a hurry, rather unkempt - which I was!
We applied online for our renewal passports. We took our own photos but they rejected the first 14 on mine. Number 15 was accepted though lol. I'd just about nearly given up by then. I thought it would be easy on my phone too. You just post off your old passport after applying here. My new one came in 2 weeks in the post.
Sally from Devon
Good deal on using a different office. We did the same with getting our Louisiana driver's licenses. Our local OMV had a month's wait for an appointment so we drove about 20 minutes north to a small town and got in there in 3 days time.
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