“The passport program’s base fee structure alone can no longer support the cost of program operations,” the department wrote. “Since the last time inflation was accounted for in program fees, the CPI increased by 14.5 per cent, leading to expenditures outpacing revenues by approximately $121 million in fiscal year 2024-25.<\/p>\n
“The 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.”<\/p>\n
The department said several costs aren’t considered in the current passport fee structure, including program support expenses such as salaried employees, processing costs for domestic delivery of passports as well as information technology costs.<\/p>\n
“Altogether, the adjustment formulas do not account for roughly 85 percent of the passport program cost of operations,” it wrote.<\/p>\n
The document does not say just how much passports could cost if all of those expenses are taken into account.<\/p>\n
NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said some residents of her Vancouver East riding already have difficulty affording what has become an important piece of ID, even within Canada.<\/p>\n
“That’s another burden that the Liberal government is putting on everyday Canadians,” she said.<\/p>\n
Kwan said the plan to overhaul passport prices to better reflect the program’s cost “is absolutely code for the government to look to increase the cost of accessing a passport for everyday Canadians.”<\/p>\n
![\"NDP](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/01d5e3f8aca6e04ad0421a813863a4c8.jpeg\"\/)
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NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan says some constituents are already having trouble affording passports. (Justin Tang\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
The department acknowledged increasing fees will affect the ability of some to obtain or renew a travel document, in particular “clients with low incomes, families with multiple children, elderly clients, those with fixed incomes, students and youth, refugees and vulnerable consular clients.”<\/p>\n
Between January and November 2025, the government received 4.19 million applications and issued approximately 4.02 million passports or other travel documents.<\/p>\n
Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said many of her constituents are still facing challenges in passport processing times.<\/p>\n
“I think a lot of Canadians who have had challenges getting their passports processed in a timely fashion are going to wonder why they are paying more to get worse service,” she said.<\/p>\n
![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/8e8fe8d05bb9a4a46f47ad5218b366db.jpeg\"\/)
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A long line at a passport office is seen in Laval, Que., in 2022. (Ryan Remiorz\/The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
The government has struggled in recent years to keep pace with the demand for passports that surged in 2022 as the COVID-19 pandemic waned and travel restrictions loosened. News reports at the time featured long lines of Canadian passport applicants camped outside government offices for hours.<\/p>\n
While service has since improved, the government had to issue $40 million in passport and travel document fee refunds between Jan 31, 2023, and March 31, 2025, for failing to meet its service standards for processing applications.<\/p>\n
Under existing policies, if the government takes more than one to 10 days past its service standard to issue a passport or travel document, it refunds 25 per cent of the cost \u2014 and it refunds 50 per cent of the cost if it takes 11 days or more.<\/p>\n
Between March 31, 2025, and Nov. 30, 2025, it issued another 5,478 refunds totalling almost $315,000. During that time, 22,063 regular passports took longer than 30 days to process.<\/p>\n
30 business days or it’s free?<\/p>\n
Last March, Liberal MP Terry Beech, who was at the time minister of citizen services, promised to reduce the cost of passport delivery while increasing service standards<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Canadians can expect their passports to be processed within 30 business days,” Beech told a news conference. “If not, then their passport will be free of charge.”<\/p>\n Nearly a year after Beech’s promise, the government has yet to implement it.<\/p>\n