A Fredericton man says a planned trip overseas to bury his father’s ashes may have to be put on hold as he struggles to obtain a Canadian passport.
Peter Jones has been a Canadian citizen for 42 years. He says his citizenship documents were starting to yellow and weather, so he decided to laminate them to preserve them.
“My citizenship certificate, which was issued in 1974, it’s an old document … I decided back in about 2007 I was going to laminate it.”
What he didn’t realize was that laminating the document made it invalid, so he has been denied a new Canadian passport.
“They basically handed it back to me and said it’s not acceptable.”
The Immigration and Citizenship Canada website does say not to laminate documents, but there is nothing about laminated documents on Passport Canada’s website.
Jones says he used the same laminated certificate to obtain a passport in 2008, but that passport has expired and can’t be used to get a new one.
He and his wife have booked a trip back to his birthplace in England for the end of August, so he can bring his father’s ashes to Portsmouth, but now he doesn’t know if they will be able to make the trip.
“[My mother] passed away in 1992 and dad took her back two years later, so we decided to take my dad back, and they’re going to be buried in the same church that they were married in,” says Jones.
He says he has been told he will likely need to obtain a brand new citizenship certificate, which can take months. His flight is booked for Aug. 26.
Meanwhile, Halifax immigration lawyer Lee Cohen says he’s never heard a case like it before.
“In my experience, I have not had a client come to me yet because they were not able to get a passport or official Canadian document because they had laminated some of their immigration paperwork,” says Cohen.
However, he says he usually tells his clients not to laminate anything, just in case.
“I even discourage them from folding their documents, although you can fold them,” says Cohen. “My advice? Take this document, put it in a safe space and never go to it again, unless the Canadian government needs it.”
Jones says he plans to send off pages of documents and forms proving that he is, indeed, a Canadian citizen, but he may have to wait until next year to bury his father’s ashes.
“I think he’d be disappointed.”
With files from CTV Atlantic's Laura Brown
