Canadians can now renew their passport online but there’s still a catch

Renewing a passport in Canada just got a bit less painful, at least on paper. Immigration Minister Lena Diab announced on Tuesday that online passport renewal is now open to all eligible adult Canadians, with the daily cap on applications lifted for good.

The online option has technically existed for a couple of years now, but the most recent version of the service was still limited to 2,000 applications a day. As of this week, that ceiling is gone, and the government expects up to two million applications could end up qualifying now that the door’s wide open.

With that said, the new model isn’t exactly a wide-open option for any adult who’d rather skip an in-person trip to Service Canada.

Who actually qualifies

A handful of conditions need to be met before you can renew online, according to Canada.ca. You need a home and mailing address in Canada, and you had to be older than 16 when your current passport was issued. That passport also needs to have been issued sometime in the past 15 years. On top of that, your passport needs to already be expired, or set to expire within the next six months. If it’s still got more than six months left on it, online renewal isn’t an option yet, no matter how far ahead you’d like to plan.

A couple of other conditions are worth knowing too. You need to not require a passport for at least the next 20 business days, plus mailing time, and the gender identifier on your new passport has to match what’s shown on your current one, unless you’re carrying the “X” observation sticker. Anyone who reported a passport lost or stolen and later found it is also out of luck here, unless the old passport has already been formally returned to the government.

A few other catches worth knowing

Online renewal still requires a professional digital photo, the same kind you’d need for an in-person application, so a phone selfie won’t cut it.

Processing isn’t any faster than other simplified renewal options, either. Applications submitted online follow the same 20-business-day standard as mail-in or in-person simplified renewals, and that standard is backed by the government’s guarantee that fees get refunded if it takes longer than 30 days. Applying online does come with one real perk, though: applicants can track their application’s progress in real time, something people mailing in paperwork don’t get. If a passport is needed sooner than 20 business days out, an in-person appointment is still the way to go, since 10-business-day, express, and urgent service all require showing up in person.

The moment a renewal gets submitted, the current passport is cancelled and stops being valid, so this isn’t something to start right before a trip.

The online option is also limited to people actually living in Canada. Anyone applying from outside the country still has to go through the mail or visit a Government of Canada office abroad.

More info on how to get the process started is available at Canada.ca.