Delays at Vital Statistics

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This article was published 03/02/2021 (1895 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitobans are facing a months-long wait to get documents such as marriage and death certificates from the Manitoba Vital Statistics Agency.

While the provincial agency’s website says the wait time for certificates is six to eight weeks, the actual wait time can be up to six months, said Brockie Donovan funeral services professional Michelle Klemick.

“As of late, I would say that to receive a provincial death certificate, families are waiting six months at least,” she said.

Manitoba Vital Statistics Agency is the provincial agency responsible for issuing birth certificates, name-change certificates, death certificates and marriage certificates. The agency, which is under the purview of Manitoba Finance, is also responsible for legal name changes and change of sex designations.

The long delays can cause issues, including in selling a person’s house after they die, Klemick said, as the provincial land titles office needs the death certificate.

The cause of the delay in getting documents isn’t clear, she said, but Vital Statistics says they are experiencing a larger than normal call volume.

The agency itself has a message posted on its website saying the wait time for certificates is “longer than normal.”

“Please allow additional time for processing since applications for regular issuance service are processed in the order received,” the message reads.

Despite this, Memories Chapel funeral director Brent Buchanan said he has seen long delays at Vital Statistics for years.

Buchanan said Brandon West MLA and Central Services Minister Reg Helwer was able to help the funeral home speed up the process of getting death certificates on Monday, but before that the wait could be up to seven months for certificates. Now, he said the funeral home is only waiting two months.

“To put that in perspective, Saskatchewan is only about one week and (British Columbia) sends them out in about two to three days,” he said.

“We’re in the day of computers. Like seriously, I can get one from Saskatchewan in a week … so the program is wrong here in Manitoba.”

It’s an issue Buchanan said he has been raising with the provincial government for years, but it’s not improving, especially in the past year.

A spokesperson for Helwer said he was not available to comment on the issue on Tuesday afternoon.

“The thing that I don’t understand, in this age of technology, how can we be getting worse instead of better? That makes no sense to me at all,” said Buchanan.

The backlog isn’t due to COVID-19 deaths, either, he said, as the total number of deaths in the province hasn’t changed to a large degree.

A spokesperson for Manitoba Finance said the provincial government is “committed to reducing delays in service times” for issuing documents from the Manitoba Vital Statistics Agency.

“The department of Finance is taking a multi-pronged approach to improve operations for employees and the public, which includes enhancing work stations and computer equipment, hiring to fill vacancies and reviewing operations to speed up service delivery times,” an emailed statement reads.

The problem isn’t limited to funeral homes. Stacy Senkbeil, a lawyer at Meighen Haddad’s Brandon office, said her clients have also been dealing with months-long delays at Vital Statistics.

While she said she couldn’t speak to what might be causing the backlog, she didn’t start noticing it until 2020.

In one case, she said a person died in March, but it took until late October to receive the death certificate.

While there is a huge delay in getting certificates, Senkbeil said the process can be sped up considerably by paying for the certificate to be expedited.

According to the agency’s website, it costs $30 for each certificate, but a rush service to send a certificate costs $65.

“I shifted my advice to clients, which was ‘Let’s pay double, because for the extra $30 maybe you’ll get it quicker than a few months,’” she said.

In another case, a client ordered a death certificate in mid-October, which is yet to arrive. But they also ordered an expedited certificate, which arrived within a week, Senkbeil said.

Senkbeil said she was told Vital Statistics is currently processing certificates from August 2020.

» dmay@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @DrewMay_