Wait times for death certificates in Quebec keep getting worse, despite ministry efforts

Months after Quebec pledged to improve how quickly it issues death certificates, the average wait-time continues to get worse.

Last spring, it took an average of 40 to 45 working days to register a death in Quebec. That's for applications that were complete or not missing any information. Once the death is registered, a death certificate is typically issued within a week.

The delay has increased by roughly a week to 52 days as of the end of May, according to the most recent statistics available from the Employment Ministry, which oversees the civil status registrar, the agency responsible for registering births, marriages and deaths.

But Jane Blanchard says actual wait times are much longer than that. She's handled death certificate applications at Montreal's Kane and Fetterly funeral home for 20 years, and says she's never seen wait times this long.

"Just when I thought it could not get worse, it has," said Blanchard, who has pending applications from as far back as January.

Without an official death certificate from the province, bereaved loved ones can't sell or transfer property, access bank accounts or do their taxes.

7 months and counting

Lynda Baker-Thorslund's father, Graham Baker, died in Montreal at the end of December 2023. 

Seven months later, Baker's family is still waiting for his death certificate. His daughter checked with the funeral home to make sure the application was sent and contacted the civil status registrar, who would only say they were working on it.

"It's frustrating because there are some financial things that can't be done without that certificate," said Baker-Thorslund, who lives in Ottawa. 

That includes transferring her father's tax-free savings account and registered retirement income fund into her mother's name. 

In addition to phoning the registrar, Baker-Thorslund also tried to check the status of the application using an online verification link on the registrar's web site, but it didn't work. 

"I'm sort of left wondering, is it being processed? Has something gone wrong?" said Baker-Thorslund.

Her father was born in Montreal and lived in the city until his death. He was married to Baker-Thorslund's mother for 63 years. 

"There's nothing complicated about it," said Baker-Thorslund, who contacted the Quebec Liberal Party MNA for her mother's riding in the Town of Mount Royal, Michelle Setlakwe, about the issue.

She says the province needs to do a better job communicating with families. If there's missing information or an error was made, it should be flagged immediately. 

But Blanchard said incomplete applications often get tossed onto a pile and are dealt with later. In the meantime, families can wait weeks before being notified that a document is missing or if there's a typo. 

On a recent application, the registrar asked a family Blanchard was helping for information regarding a divorce. Luckily, Blanchard said one of the woman's siblings had a copy of the divorce certificate and provided it to the registrar. After that, the death certificate was issued within a few days. 

"But if you hadn't found that divorce certificate [...] you've got another delay of another two weeks," said Blanchard.

Ministry hired workers

When CBC reported on the long delays many families were experiencing in March, Quebec's Employment Ministry blamed the delays on an increase in the number of deaths, a result of the province's aging population.

Employment Minister Kateri Champagne Jourdain said extra staff were coming in to improve turnaround times and that there was a commitment to bring wait times down to 20 working days by the end of 2024.

Similar promises were made in 2019 when wait times crept up.

"It seems to be like a roller-coaster ride," said Blanchard. "It goes terrible and then they sort of do band-aid solutions to fix it and then it goes badly again."

Wait times of six, seven and eight months are not reasonable, but Blanchard said funeral homes, notaries and families are stuck.

"What are you going to do? I call, the family calls, we're stuck, there's nothing to do. I just give up. It's so frustrating for everybody. I feel for the families. I feel bad for them," said Blanchard.

The ministry said it has hired and trained new employees, who have now been working since July. 

The province says these new resources combined with the 'robotization' of certain processes, willhelp reduce waiting times in the coming months, said Jonathan Gaudreault, a ministry spokesperson.