Government Effeciency?

Alot of people spend alot of time complaining about how long and inefficient their interactions with their government are. Well today I'm going to share three stories of excellent service to balance things out!

The city of Toronto is moving forward with several waste reduction plans. The most recent has been a switch to larger and easier to pick up recycling containers. Earlier this year, they sent a little pamphlet to homeowners asking them to pick the size of container they wanted. The efficiency part comes in when they provided me with a web site that required under 1 minute for me to pick my selection. Maybe it's a small thing but it made me happy. And now I have my extra large recycling bin to compliment the exterior of my home!

The province sent me a helpful reminder that my car needs to have it's license renewed this year. This is my first time doing this so I looked at all the options on the form they sent. Sure enough, there was an online option that took me all of 5 minutes to fill out. In 3 days I had my new plate stickers!

Since Jessi and I are lucky enough to have an AWESOME Granddad who is taking us back to Maui this December, we needed to get our passports updated. Last time I did this it took about 2 hours of waiting in a passport office. I've heard from others that this is quick. This year we elected to send our passport applications in by mail. We printed off the application form (yay internet!) and got the required info and signatures (now anyone who holds a valid passport and has known you for several years can be your guarantor). We shipped it priority mail (or whatever it's called) so that we would know when it got to passport Canada since we also had to include our birth certificates and marriage license. After a short wait (2 weeks maybe) our passports arrived in the mail! How easy is that!

So here's to our civil service workers who facilitated all that interaction. Keep up the good work!