Canada is raising passport fees this month, with annual hikes to follow

On March 31, 2026, the Canadian government will raise passport fees for the first time in more than ten years.

This price increase will impact all passports and travel documents, and related service fees, charged inside Canada and abroad.

All relevant fees are expected to rise by 2.7%, in line with the April 2024 All-items Consumer Price Index (CPI) for Canada.

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The Canadian government has posted the soon-to-be-implemented passport fees, with plans to issue refunds for passport services that take longer than 30 days to fulfill.

Only the start of fee increases

The increase will not be a one-time change, but part of a new payment structure that will see passport fees increase annually in line with inflation.

While this process will initially be facilitated by keeping price increases in line with Canada’s CPI, impact statements by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) indicate that the passport program is “in the midst of a comprehensive fee structure review, which will result in options for fee adjustments to account for the true cost of operations”.

Once this review is complete, the department will submit potential solutions for public consultation before implementing them.

The immigration department has not specified a timeline for when these options will be presented, with current plans indicating that passport fees will continue to rise with inflation, as prescribed in the CPI, until a new method is formally adopted.

Notably, because IRCC has chosen to keep fee increases in line with inflation, not all passport/travel document-related fees are guaranteed to increase every year.

Why are passport fees increasing?

IRCC has chosen to update the way that they increase passport-related fees, citing the fact that the current "adjustment formulas do not account for roughly 85% of the Passport Program cost of operations".

This is cited directly in the regulations amending how passport fees will change moving forward:

"For example, if the Program were to collect on the adjustments in accordance with these formulas in fiscal year 2025–2026, they would require a 20% fee increase for abroad applications, but a 1% decrease for domestic applications. Domestic applications account for approximately 90–95% of all applications, and therefore the majority of processing efforts."

The strength of the Canadian passport

In the January 2026 Henley Passport Index, Canada remains one of the world’s strongest passports, landing 8th overall and giving holders access to 181 destinations without needing to secure a visa in advance.

Canada again sits ahead of the United States, which placed 10th in the most recent rankings. The Canadian passport’s position also represents a rebound compared with where it finished late in 2025, at ninth place.

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