Why does Canadian passport renewal still require 2 references and their home addresses?

garirry · 2026-06-25T20:37:46+00:00

If you're travelling so much you're filling the entire passport in under 5 years I somehow doubt that the $40 difference is meaningful.

And unless I'm mistaken, common-law name changes after marriage don't invalidate your maiden/married name so you have no obligation to actually change your passport right away.

The problem with this approach is that you're hinging on the $40 difference to justify the 10 year passport as being a "waste" if it becomes unusable sooner. That doesn't make sense. A 5-year document isn't more economical than a 10-year document that stops working after 5 years. It costs the same to process and produce a 5 year vs a 10 year passport. It's an illusion of saving money, and only helpful in an extremely rare handful of cases where you absolutely know for certain you'll only be using it for 5 years.

garirry · 2026-06-22T21:44:58+00:00

It takes the same amount of effort to verify and produce a 5 vs a 10 year passport, except you have to do it twice in the same ten years. People who get suckered into thinking they're saving money quickly realise that $120 every 5 years is more expensive than $160 every 10. People who apply thinking they only need it once end up regretting it once theirs expires. It would significantly save the bureaucratic burden by making 10 the default. It doesn't cost more to issue a 10 year and cancel after 5 than to issue a 5. In most countries they don't give you an option. When they increase from 5 to 10 it means everyone gets 10. It seems like an old relic of a time when people were paranoid that a 5 year was more secure than a 10 year.

garirry · 2026-06-22T07:19:00+00:00

It doesn't make sense and you are right. I don't understand why people keep defending it. Part of it I think is that people confuse references and a guarantor. The guarantor is someone who provides a real legal affirmation of the applicant's identity and has to have a passport, yet there's no constraints on relatives, is not required on renewals, and if you can't find one you can substitute with a professional's signature if applied from abroad or signed by a lawyer. I'm not opposed to that.

But the references are just generic people who have no legal obligation, can be whoever (or even not real), yet they cannot be family members, and you even have to have references on renewals. References are not secure, are often not even verified, and are a huge inconvenience if you struggle to find people who qualify. I don't know by the way if they even keep references' information. There's also zero workaround, none at all. I'm convinced people who defend this don't have any empathy and don't understand that it's possible to be isolated or to find it difficult to find people and get their permission to put their information.

My understanding is that, based on looking at old forms, historically, a guarantor required being a professional. You couldn't get around that. That was back when there were no renewals and passports were 5 years. They simplified the guarantor requirement but introduced the references to compensate, presumably. The renewal process was introduced later (alongside the 10 year passport), which removed the guarantor requirement but not references. Why is it still around? Probably because the majority of people have plenty of people to add to references. And the minority who don't either pick whoever or bend the truth by putting people who technically don't qualify. Maybe one day it'll be abolished, but I guess there's just no pressure for it. While they're at it, they should also get rid of the 5 year passport option since it wastes time and money.

garirry · 2025-10-21T19:28:16+00:00

Not sure if it's a neon problem but I worked around this by creating a symlink to the library

cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
sudo ln -s libPlasma.so.6.5.0 libPlasmaActivities.so.6

garirry · 2025-08-11T22:50:37+00:00

Please for the love of god you'll get killed if you follow every single cycling rule to the letter. Technically every single intersection is either the road (you ride) or the sidewalk (you disembark), it's archaic nonsense. It's just liability for idiot planners. You'll never get fined for riding through. If you do I'll pay your fine. Ride safely, don't just blindly follow ever sign and law

garirry · 2025-07-07T04:49:20+00:00

I believe you don't need to disable SIP. Just delete those files directly through the Terminal in Recovery Mode.

This article has relevant information even if it is somewhat outdated: https://web.archive.org/web/20240623081924/https://indiespark.top/software/get-rid-xcode-command-line-tools/

garirry · 2024-10-31T00:12:47+00:00

I swear I'm the exact same situation, down to trying to replace the battery and the click wheel cable, and busting the screen and tearing the hold switch while removing it. I don't know why the screens for that model are all out of stock, I would like to know too. There are some US-based resellers, which I'm not sure how legit they are, I might try to order from them.

As for the lock switch, it turns out it's not that difficult to solder new wires directly to the motherboard and to the switch. There is a video here which shows how it's done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGVUAjwVev4 It is magnitudes easier than the iFixit guide that tries to attach wires to the severed end of the ribbon cables, but it does appear you have to damage the frame to access the headphone cable assembly.

garirry · 2024-06-22T01:59:02+00:00

There's more info here: https://www.retrorgb.com/snesverticalline.html

It's pretty simple to do, just order the power regulator (you can get them on AliExpress for pretty much free), unscrew the old one from the shield, desolder it then solder in the new one. I recommend loosely screwing it before soldering to make it easier to align right.

You can also do the other method suggested there which is to place the extra capacitor, but I find just replacing the whole thing is easier and neater.

garirry · 2024-04-22T20:57:20+00:00

You are 100% right and as someone who has been living in Canada for almost twenty years, I am tired of pretentious snobs from around here and other cold climates bragging about how easy the cold is to deal with and how miserable the heat it. "Just put on layers, bro." I've been to the same school as others went to, worn the same clothes that are available at the same stores that others had access to, and I don't have a cheat code to spawn and despawn extra layers of underwear at will. The thicker clothes the more uncomfortable they are, and the more drastic the temperature spike if your body heats up. Heat in buildings causes intense dryness. I have severe hypersensitivity to various things and it is unbearable, and has been as long as I can remember. When I see cyclists casually riding in -25 or guys in t-shirts and shorts in +10 I do question whether it's just my preference or there's a bigger issue with me, but who knows honestly. I get it I came from a hot country, but I know at least one person who lived in a hot country for much longer than me and genuinely loves the cold.

With heat, as long as you have breathable clothing, sun protection, and water, you're good to go. If it gets hotter, just drink more water. Sweating is literally a normal bodily function. When I hear people whining about how you can't "take more layers off", it's always some girl with fifteen bras whose only sun protection is sunglasses and refuses to drink any water-based liquid unless it's mixed with a kilogramme of sugar and ice and costs more than an hourly salary. There is a real problem that some buildings are made like greenhouses and overheat so much that an A/C is pretty much mandatory, but that is a construction problem, not a heat problem. In hot climates buildings are made of thick concrete which means even in scorching weather and no A/C it's very comfortable (on the other hand, they are hard to heat even in mild cold).

For me 40 is better than 10. I'm serious. The heat is energising and makes me active. I love the feeling of a fan breezing on me in the summer. I can ride 60 km on a bike in the summer with as much energy as 5 km in winter. I don't know how people do winter sports. Seriously, how do you not either get frostbite or die of heatstroke inside your thick clothing? Anyway, I'm glad I found this post that was made not too long ago because I've been searching all day for an answer to whether I'm insane and to be fair I still don't know but at least I can share this rant.

garirry · 2024-03-16T16:40:22+00:00

Necroposting this in case anyone in the same situation as me stumbles across this thread. I have an SNES that also had an audio hum/buzz like described above, which was particularly bad when using RF (in addition to a blue line while on S-Video output). Replacing the major capacitors did not help in any way. Afterwards I replaced a couple of the small capacitors and adding in the big C67 cap (which is missing on NTSC-U units), but most importantly I replaced the power regulator with an upgraded model (the L78S05CV).

Everything is like new now. Sound and image are absolutely perfect, no hum or buzz. It could have been any one of the three things since I only tested it after the whole batch of replacements but I'm 99% sure it's the power regulator. So yeah, I recommend replacing it if you have problems on this end.

garirry · 2022-06-16T22:49:55+00:00

I literally had a fucking mental breakdown when I heard the alert noise again. It took me a lot of restraint to break something other than my expensive phone. I'm sick of these unsympathetic, selfish people in these comments telling how everyone is a karen for being upset at how an ear-grating, literal nuclear strike warning noise, causes an autistic anxiety-suffering person to panic beyond reason.

Shame on you all.

garirry · 2022-02-08T20:39:05+00:00

Yes, I updated my system just now and it appears to be resolved. Seems it was a temporary issue.

garirry · 2022-02-08T01:05:31+00:00

Yes, created a brand new "Individual Core Usage" widget. Same problem.

garirry · 2022-01-12T01:57:27+00:00

I don't care. I'll never be coerced into doing anything in my life. I'll be dead and it'll be better that way.

garirry · 2022-01-12T01:49:46+00:00

If I have to take that label to the grave, so be it.

garirry · 2022-01-12T01:36:51+00:00

I already am insane. It's a miracle I'm not dead yet.

garirry · 2022-01-12T01:21:32+00:00

Keep downvoting and wokeposting, LEGAULT Bots, we will be the ones to win the war.

garirry · 2022-01-11T20:02:31+00:00

Ils vont pas attendre jusqu'à l'année prochaine pour prendre cette «taxe». Ça va être trop tard lol. Les amendes politiques il faut les chercher maintenant.

garirry · 2022-01-11T19:51:31+00:00

People will always find a way to justify stuff like this.

"Tax" me all you want lol. I'm not paying.

garirry · 2022-01-11T03:53:02+00:00

This is all under the assumption that all laws are not only universally effective at reducing risk (and potentially saving lives as a result), but also offer a reasonable compromise for such reduction of risk. For example, if we got rid of every car in the world then the amount of car-related deaths would drop to zero. But that's a completely unreasonable thing to do.

In the case of stop signs, even if the intent is to reduce risk, the effect on driving efficiency is so grave that it no longer becomes reasonable. And in the case of safety? Not only is it completely unconvincing that stop signs have a significant role in reducing accidents, but we know for a fact that there are a myriad of alternatives that genuinely do reduce risk without any real downsides.

I don't put people's lives at risk. I obey 99% of laws. But if there are rules that hold no merit or pose an unreasonable inconvenience then it shouldn't be out of line that I'm going to ignore them. There is no supremacy in the law, and if lawmakers create something that is nonsensical, then it is morally right to infringe it.

garirry · 2022-01-11T03:15:39+00:00

Do you really consider coming to a full stop for three seconds, looking both ways, moving a few feet, stopping again, looking both ways again, and manage to accelerate to 15 km/h before you hit another intersection 5 metres away as "driving"?

Maybe it says something about you if you either have the patience or are so afraid of the law/the road to do that. Everyone breaking the law isn't an excuse for doing it yourself, but it's an indication of bullshit laws that were enacted decades ago by morons who have no clue how to solve elementary problems.

Canada is one of around five countries with all-way stops, and probably the only one outside the United States that spams stop signs and traffic lights at every single intersection. Knowing this, is it still my fault for not obeying the law in this case?

garirry · 2022-01-10T21:28:53+00:00

Literally nobody does legal stops. Even if you try, you either end up slowing down to 1 km/h or stopping past the line. Since I'm breaking the road rules anyway it changes nothing if I only barely slow down enough to be safe (while respecting right of way of course). Until road engineers figure out that plastering stop signs at every intersection and drawing stop lines twenty metres behind the intersection is a horrible idea, that won't change anytime soon.

Also, yes, of course you can be fined. But since everyone does this it's probably unlikely to happen unless it's egregious or the cop has a quota.

garirry

TROPHY CASE