I have just become aware of this information via Twitter. As someone asked which Consulate would be closest, I thought it might be helpful to post all of the Consulates and the Embassy in one location. I have no idea whether this is the situation at any of the other Canadian locations.
If anyone is aware of any similar information, please post it.
Embassy:
Ottawa covers the areas of:
Eastern Ontario (Kingston, Lanark, Leeds, Prescott, Renfrew, Russell and Stormont); and those parts of the Québec regions of Outaouais and Abitibi-Témiscamingue near Ottawa.
Info
Consulates:
Vancouver:
British Columbia and Yukon Territory
Info
Calgary
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northwest Territories
Info
Winnipeg:
Emergency Services Only. For Visa and other services contact the Calgary office
Info
Toronto:
Ontario (except for areas East of Kingston, which are included in the Ottawa consular district)
Info
Montreal:
Greater Montreal and the regions of southern Quebec province (Laurentides, Lanaudiere, Laval, Montreal, Montregie, Estrie, and the southern parts of Centre-du-Quebec); including Drummondville
Info
Quebec City:
Those regions of Quebec province to the north and east of the Montreal and Ottawa Districts (indicated above), plus the territory of
Nunavut
Info
Halifax:
Atlantic Canada (New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and P.E.I.) and the French islands of St. Pierre & Miquelon.
Info
Thanks for posting this, Tricia, as Mr Bubblebustin and I are revving up to renounce in the not-too-distant future.
Perhaps it is time to organise renunciation tourism. It is definitely a growing market.
Think about it, a renunciation package could include an all inclusive holiday bundled together with an appointment at the US embassy or consulate.
Deluxe packages would include shorter waiting periods for embassy appointments in exotic locations where fewer people with US taint are residing. Perhaps Eritrea would be a good destination?
http://www.traveleritrea.com/attractions.php
http://eritrea.usembassy.gov/
There’s 251 business days in Canada less the US holidays say about another 5 that don’t overlap and I think it’s 15 ex-citizens per day somewhere I read the embassy processes…….could Toronto be doing about 3690 renunciations/relinquishments per year??? If you max’ed out for another 7 consulates that the capacity could be just over 29,000 per year.
So the numbers for Canada alone exceed the Federal Register figures?
Rats jumping the ship?
Lol, one of those lady-like chortle snorts on that one, Joe Blow!
A few phone calls to the embassies to book a renunciation you don’t want and you have some pretty good stats.
A couple of times I rang the IRS help line during tax time to ask how I report my foreign mutual funds. My record is 6 transfers before they tell me it’s not in their remit. ‘Hello, Can you help me understand if my ISA is taxable?’, Nice lady: “sorry that’s not in our remit’. Then you can say ‘Funny that because when you were screwing me in OVDP you sure thought it was taxable’.
There is an OVDP helpline. ‘Hello, I haven’t declared my bank account in Jersey. It’s got 6 million pounds in it. Is that bad?’.
Isaac Brock isn’t where you’d think to go for laughs, but tonight it is, lol! Thanks, Neill. Sometime you just gotta laugh – this coming from someone three years in OVDI with an IRS agent who’s looking through a haystack for an non-existent needle!
@Neill
Very happy to hear you still have a sense of humor!
@Neill – the sad thing is on the helpline you’ve got some Homelander who has never left the US who has no clue about British humour or their view of the world is CNN or Fox News.
So there you have it the helpline that doesn’t know the difference between Birmingham, Alabama or Birmingham, England.
If you told them about the Bull Ring they’d think you’re from Mexico.
What should anyone expect?
So, the next time a commenter asks you “why don’t you just denounce?” you can tell them that the line is too long
I’m sorry to have to ask this question, but is “denounce” and “renounce” the same thing . . . or is “denounce” just a mis-spelling of the word “renounce”. My own sister asked me “why don’t you just “denounce” your dual citizenship? (scream) She doesn’t realize that she also has U.S. indicia due to our U.S. born mother . . . though unlike me, she has never held a U.S. passsport, and is therefore unlikely to be caught in the “hunt for U.S. persons”.
@MarkTwain
LOL!!!
@ Don and fellow Brockers-you guys made my day with Don’s statistics and Denouncing your passport-tears of laughter .
this rat has jumped and is trying, by donating/fundraising to ADCS and posting here and educating family/friends/colleagues about USG tax extraterritoriality, to help prep the way for the other 7 million rats, oopx excuse me USPs abroad…….
My favourite activity now is seeing the number sink as we move twoeards the magic day of 1st november , only 72K rqeuired, I will make my 3rd donation this week
The whole process is ridiculous. They just set a date once a month for renunciations. 100’s of people show up and renounce in unison…. done. I know some from other countries only have to vote in a foreign country to lose citizenship, how about they do that? What’s with all the idiotic bureaucracy involved?
@Sasha – ‘denounce’ verses ‘renounce’
Denounce means “to accuse publicly”, “to condemn strongly”, and “to announce, esp. in a menacing way”. It can also mean “to give formal notice of the ending of (a treaty, armistice, etc.)”.
Renounce means “to give up (a claim, right, belief, etc.), usually by a formal public statement”, or “to cast off or disown; refuse further association with”.
If you think about it, Homelanders ‘denounce’ on a daily basis (or hourly if they use Twitter or Facebook): the Repubs denounce Obama, the Dems denounce Boehner, and others denounce Health Care, Socialism, The ARA (gun nuts), Hillary, the Tea Party, BIL’s, SIL’s, ex-husbands/wives, climate change, the neighbour next door, Miley Cyrus, and anyone with a PhD behind their name.
They very seldom renounce. Some ‘denounce’ SNAP (food stamps), but those on SNAP rarely ‘renounce’ their entitlement to SNAP. Some Homelanders ‘denounce’ the rules and regulations that allow 50% of American residents to owe no federal tax, but those entitled to the benefits never ‘renounce’ the rules and regulations in order to pay tax anyway.
Therefore, ‘denounce’ is understood by the Homelanders. ‘Renounce’ is an unknown.
When commenting publicly, the sharp Homelander will use the understood ‘denounce’ to make their point appear more scholarly and intelligent (even though it’s incorrect) instead of the more common, general phrase understood by all (and the one they would prefer to use): “f**k off”.
But, you knew that anyway 🙂
@Don
I’m not sure, but I think that the Toronto consulate only books relinquishments/renouncements on Thursdays. From my experience and others I’m in touch with, we’ve all had appointments on Thursdays. Did anyone else have a Toronto appointment other than a Thursday? Not sure about other cities.
@Mark Twain
You’re as witty as your namesake!
Now now, people. Just as we must all respect the “sovereign right” of the US to enact extraterritorial laws and demand friends and enemies alike respect them under threat of confiscatory sanctions, we must also respect the sovereign right of the US to make renouncers, denouncers and relinquishers fly, drive and walk halfway across our country to look a bureaucrat in the eye and say “I mean it” instead of simply filing a one-pager on line a la Ted Cruz with his Canadian citizenship renunciation!
I don’t know about this year, but in 2013 Toronto was doing renunciations on Tuesdays as well, because I was one. I do recall on their online calendar when choosing a date that there were at least two days per week to choose from.
It seems to be very much a story of accomplices (played by consulates) assisting robbers (played by the IRS) by not letting people out of a hall until they can be checked for (by FATCA) and relieved of their valuables. Unfortunately, under U.S. law it’s all legal.
At one time, the appointment slots available in Toronto exceeded 100 – perhaps at peak, over 150? I’d have to go back on the IBS threads to check (Pacifica may remember) because I/we were informally tracking availability – ex. # of slots per month for booking. Caveat though – those slots were also for ‘other citizen services’ so it is hard to say how many were renunciations/relinquishments, though some of the reports here told of being in the same waiting area as 2 or 3 renunciants at a time. The renunciation ‘service’ used to be available on days other than Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Restricting the slots in Canada and elsewhere will only provide robust fodder for an international human rights claim against the US – as per the right to choose one’s nationality. At what threshold does this chokehold on renunciation/relinquishment demonstrate a denial of an internationally recognized human right? The result is denying people the right to expatriate, regardless of whether the slots are restricted for that reason. I’d think that the bottleneck at the US Consulate in Toronto has started to make the situation clear and it isn’t pretty.
See Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
Article 15:
“(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
They sort of tried this once (perhaps not a once-a-month thing but a group renunciation “ceremony”: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americans-in-canada-driven-to-divorce-from-their-country/article4179937/
Was the media coverage just too embarrassing?
@ Badger,
Yes, I remember you, me and others tracking Toronto bookings when they were using the on-line booking system, which they did in 2012-13, before the switch to e-mail booking. I took some notes during that time, but I don’t have them handy.
But basically, what I noted during those years was that Toronto was usually making 176-192 appointment slots available per month, occasionally I think it went over 200 (I’d want to look at my notes, though, to be sure). Usually 16 per day, 3 or 4 days a week. December and the summer months had less days, made available, as I recall, but still resulting in around 144 slots.
As you mentioned, at that time one booked under “Notarial and Other Services,” so we can’t know how many slots were used by people applying for CLNs. But also as you mentioned, reports indicated that people seeing other people there for the same purpose. I’d noticed that too.
It was pretty easy to get an appt within about a month during most of 2012-2013. In early 2012, wait time was around two weeks. It crept up to around as much as six weeks or so by late Spring 2014, maybe a bit more if you had to wait for the next month’s sign-up chart to go on-line (they only had the current month and the following month’s sign-up charts available for use at any given time). So wait time was increasing, which is never good, but it seemed to do so pretty consistently until late Spring 2014.
If they’re now not booking until January 2015, I think either Toronto’s really cut back on the appointments they’re making available (immensely so) or they really got swamped with appt requests when news coverage finally started racheting up beginning with FATCA July 1st. Very interesting, awful though for persons who need to get this overwith.
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I just spoke with pacifica and she located the thread that I remembered but had no idea where to find. This is info she posted on May 21, 2014:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/renunciation/comment-page-110/#comment-1815793
As far as I know, this is the last time we have had any direct contact concerning the process. Of course, one can write an email, request and so on………..
Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but although each US consulate in Canada has been “assigned” responsibility for certain geographical districts, it is my understanding that limitation only applies in “emergency” cases. If you live in Ottawa, for example, you are perfectly free to book a relinquishment or renunciation appointment in Toronto or any other Canadian consulate, and vice-versa (Torontonians can book appointments at other consulates). At least that was the policy in 2012, when my wife was notified in writing by the State Department to this effect (and in fact had her interview in Toronto, though we live in Ottawa, because at that time word was out that the folks at the US Embassy here in Ottawa were being real SOBs about these interviews. Toronto wasn’t.
Obviously not nice to have to incur travel expenses for this, but folks living in Toronto might want to check on interview availabilities in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, and Halifax if they are in a rush and might be prepared to bear the time and financial costs of travel. Or are all of the consulates in Canada backlogged? (Wouldn’t surprise me; we’ve been predicting this for three years now, as media coverage of the story started increasing. Some of the US Embassies in Europe had long wait lists a year or two ago, Berne Switzerland was one notable example that sticks in my memory. Pacifica (who is much more on top of the stats and experiences with consulates as reported on this website) might elaborate on this…
As a further ironic/humourous aside, I recall one case when someone not living in Vietnam actually booked and conducted a CLN interview with the US Embassy in Hanoi, and got his CLN that way, a couple of years ago (probably on a holiday or business trip, I can’t imagine any Canadian flying across the Pacific to do this except as part of a trip for another reason). As I recall from the report, there wasn’t a wait list in Hanoi and the service was polite and quick. The irony of that is utterly delicious for those of us who remember the Vietnam War … Can’t recall now if that was an actual report on our web thread elsewhere on this website, or a report or maybe third-hand account posted in a comment on another of the gazillion threads on this website.