People eligible for visa-free entry to Canada could not get into the country
Travelers were unable to obtain electronic travel authorization due to problems with the website.
Recently,Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) expanded the list of countries whose residents can visit Canada without a visa. They only need to obtain an electronic travel authorization (eTA) to travel. One had to pay a fee of $7 CAD, fill out an online application, and within minutes one received an eTA.
It could be assumed that the addition of 13 countries with a total population of more than 250 million people to the program could cause a surge in the number of eTA applications. That's exactly what happened. The IRCC apparently did not expect this.
The servers were so overloaded that the system failed and the IRCC website stopped working. People faced a problem when their payment was not accepted and the website page showed an error. The server crash affected not only eTA applicants from the 13 countries recently added to the program, but also those who had long been registered in the system. Attempts to make a transaction from a different device or open the site in a different browser did nothing.
The site outage began Thursday. IRCC said they are aware of the problem and are working to fix it, advising those who can't get their electronic permit to try later.
Many travelers who had flights to Canada scheduled had to cancel their tickets, and some did not even had that option. Others had hotel rooms booked. As a result, many people suffered serious financial losses and were unable to attend scheduled business meetings or go on long-awaited vacations. They wrote on social media that they tried to contact IRCC by phone or through social media, but were simply advised to try again using the inoperable site. "IRCC doesn't care," concluded those whose plans were disrupted by the server problems.
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