Michael Smith doesn’t need paper bills.

“I pay them online before they ever arrive.  They get shredded upon deliverance,” he said.

Smith is part of the growing trend of citizens who pay their bills online.  According to big businesses around Calgary, the postal strike only helped those numbers grow.

Ian Todd of Enmax said he’s seen a dramatic increase in electronic billing.

“We have seen over 5,000 new e-bill subscribers since the beginning of the strike, and the media exposure of the strike has seen the number continue to spike,” he said.

Chris Gerritsen of Telus said that almost half of Telus subscribers were already using e-billing but the situation with Canada Post has, according to Gerritsen, almost surely increased subscribers.

Canada Post spokesman John Caines said the national letter carrier will recover.

“We are concerned about the lost business but we are looking to rebuild our relationship with our customers and hopefully they choose our e-bill service in place of our competitors,” he said.

Postal workers were ordered back to work by Parliament earlier this week and are now working on the backlog of mail from the start of the work stoppage.