Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as we all know, the rules regarding the requirement for passports have recently changed. This has put Canadians, including northerners, in the same position as everyone else planning to travel to the U.S. or abroad. I don't often travel out of Canada. I had an expired passport, so when the need for a passport presented itself recently, I inadvertently got caught up in the rush. I want to share my experience in the hope of helping northern constituents who find themselves needing a passport on short notice.

Through the persistence of my constituency assistant on the phone to the passport office, I found out that you can get a passport on 24 hours' notice. What you have to do to accomplish that may not be readily known to people. I travelled to Edmonton where I got a room in the Westin

Hotel, because it is right beside the Canada Place Building where the passport office is located on Jasper Avenue. We walked to the Canada Place Building around midnight. There on the window of the building was a sign saying, passport line forms here. There was no one around. We were tired. It was cold. So it seemed a little silly to stand there to secure first place in a non-existent line. So we went back to the hotel and set our alarm for 3:00 a.m., at which time Rick got up to go check the line.

---Laughter

Would you believe that by that time, at 3:00 a.m., there were already 25 people in the line? I don't know how long they had been there, but some of them were in sleeping bags sleeping on the sidewalk. So we hastily grabbed our canvas lawn chairs and got in the line. Between 3:00 and 6:00 a.m., when the doors opened to Canada Place, at least another 500 people had joined the line, behind us I am happy to say. When they opened the concourse at Canada Place at 6:00 a.m., the warm building was a great relief because it was about minus six out. I made the mistake of dozing off in my lawn chair. Don't do that because a security guard on his rounds noticed this and shouted from a far distance, wake that woman up. She is not allowed to sleep in a federal building. I thought, well, good morning to you too, sir.

---Laughter

The passport office opened at 8:00 a.m. and we were out by 9:00 a.m. with a receipt to come back the next day at noon to pick up our passport. So, Mr. Speaker, there are some things to note. To get an expedited passport, you must bring all necessary documentation and proof of a paid for ticket to a foreign destination. You have to pay an extra $80. So altogether you need around $150. They do not care about your reason for travel. In other words, it does not have to...