Passport Fees Tied to Annual CPI

Summary#

These final regulations remove the formula-based fee adjustments in the Passport and Other Travel Document Services Fees Regulations and let passport fees be adjusted each year for inflation under the Service Fees Act. The change comes into force on registration, with the first scheduled inflation adjustment on March 31, 2026 using the April 2024 Consumer Price Index (CPI).

What it does#

• Repeals parts of the regulations that set out the annual fee-adjustment formulas (including certain definitions and sections that described how to calculate those adjustments).
• Makes coordinating edits to the regulation’s schedule so the old formulas no longer apply.
• Subjects passport and travel-document fees to annual inflation adjustments tied to the CPI instead of the previous formula-based method.
• First annual adjustment will be applied on March 31, 2026 and use the April 2024 CPI.

Who's affected#

• Applicants for passports and other travel documents issued by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), including regular passports, temporary and emergency passports, refugee travel documents, certificates of identity, and diplomatic or special passports.
• The IRCC Passport Program and the Passport Revolving Fund, which fund passport operations from fees.
• People on low or fixed incomes, large families, seniors, students, refugees and other vulnerable consular clients could notice the impact of annual fee increases.
• The rulemaking says Canadian small businesses are not affected.

Why it matters#

• Fees will now rise (or fall) each year with inflation. That means the cost to get or renew a passport will slowly track the cost of living instead of relying on the old, limited adjustment formulas.
• The change aims to better match fee revenue to the actual cost of running the Passport Program. The program faced a shortfall after inflation outpaced the fee design; the government previously remitted about $53 million in forgone revenue and reported expenditures outpacing revenues by roughly $121 million in fiscal year 2024–2025.
• IRCC expects some implementation costs (about $0.77M over time, including $59,000 in transition costs and roughly $71,000 per year in ongoing costs).
• This is a change in how fees are adjusted, not a one-time, across-the-board new fee. A broader fee-structure review is underway and will be the subject of public consultation later.