In a Nutshell Your work permit is permission to work once you’re inside Canada. It is not what gets you onto the plane or across the border. What does that job is a separate travel document: an eTA, a visitor visa, or a Canadian passport, depending entirely on your citizenship and how you’re entering. The confusion is common because the permit and the entry document are processed together the first time around, which makes it easy to assume they’re the same thing. They aren’t — and getting this wrong the second time around, at renewal, is what actually catches people out. Study permit holders face the same split; where something differs specifically for a work permit, it’s called out below. ...

Before you zip your bag and head for the airport, sort your medications out properly. Border officers in Canada can and do inspect medications closely, and the difference between a smooth crossing and a prolonged secondary inspection usually comes down to paperwork you either have or don’t. The short answer: bring your meds in their original labelled containers, carry a copy of each prescription and a doctor’s note explaining why you take them, keep everything in your carry-on, and declare what you have. That covers most situations. The sections below fill in the details, including the cases where the rules get sharper. ...

A lot of travellers assume that crossing into Canada with a dog or cat is roughly like crossing with extra luggage: declare it, pay a small fee, move on. The reality is that Canada has specific import requirements for animals, and arriving without the right paperwork puts you at genuine risk of delays or, in the worst case, being turned back at the border. The correct documents and health preparations need to be in order before you leave home, not assembled at the crossing. ...

You submitted your eTA application, expected a quick approval email, and instead got a message saying more information is required. Here’s the part that trips people up first: the email itself never names a single document. It only tells you that something is needed and that a deadline applies. The actual list — and the only place to send anything — is somewhere else entirely. If English or French is not your first language, see the help available in other languages. ...

Before you read anything else in the email IRCC sent you, find the line that starts with Status :. That single line, not the subject and not the word “approved” you may have skimmed past, tells you which of four possible messages you actually got — and two of them mean you do not have a valid eTA yet. All four share the same generic subject line and arrive from the same no-reply government address, so the subject tells you nothing. Only that line settles it. ...

A slow Canada eTA almost always comes down to one of four specific causes: a request for supporting documents, a background or admissibility check, a system-wide slowdown, or an email that arrived but landed in spam. Each one leaves a different trace, and once you know which trace you’re looking at, you know roughly what to expect next. This guide is not about how long an eTA normally takes — it is about diagnosing why yours specifically is slow. ...

If your passport is on Canada’s visa-required list and you are booking a flight, do not assume a visitor visa is automatically your only option. A specific group of visa-required nationals can fly to Canada on an eTA instead — but qualifying for that group takes more than just holding the right passport. Get this wrong in either direction, and you either apply for the slower document when a faster one would have worked, or you show up at check-in with an eTA that never should have been approved for you. If an eTA is right for you, the first-time application walkthrough shows the steps. ...

Two different people check two different things on your way into Canada, and mixing them up is where confusion starts. The airline agent at check-in only confirms that a valid eTA is linked to the passport you’re presenting — nothing more. Whether you can actually explain your visit, prove you’ll leave again, or cover your own costs is not the airline’s job at all. That conversation belongs entirely to the border services officer who meets you after you land. ...

Yes, you can extend your stay in Canada even though you entered with an eTA, but not by doing anything to the eTA itself. The eTA got you through the boarding gate and past the first checkpoint at the airport. What governs how long you can actually remain in Canada is your visitor status, and extending that means a separate application entirely: a visitor record. That distinction trips up a lot of people, and it’s worth getting clear on before anything else. ...

The standard picture of an eTA is an email arriving within minutes of hitting submit. That picture is accurate often enough that when something different happens, it catches people off guard. A medical exam request is one of those moments: your application has paused, something specific is being assessed, and the path forward is less obvious than filling out a form. If you have already submitted your application and want to track progress, see how to check your eTA application status while you work through the steps below. The good news is that the process is structured and well-defined. Once you know the sequence, there is nothing mysterious about it. ...