Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA)

An Electronic Travel Authorization — everybody says eTA — is permission to board a flight to Canada. It is not a visa and it is not a document you hold: it is an electronic record linked to your passport number, and there is nothing to print or carry.

Who needs one

You need an eTA if all three of these are true: you are a foreign national, your nationality is visa-exempt, and you are flying to or through Canada.

Change any one of them and the answer changes. If your nationality is visa-required, you need a visitor visa instead, not an eTA — and no amount of paying for an eTA will produce one. If you are arriving by car, bus, train or boat, you need neither; you present your passport at the border. If you are a Canadian citizen, you cannot get an eTA at all, and a dual citizen must fly on a Canadian passport.

Transit counts as flying to Canada

This catches people out every year. If your route to somewhere else changes planes in Toronto or Vancouver, you are flying to Canada as far as this rule is concerned, and you need an eTA even though you never leave the airport. There is a narrow transit programme for a few nationalities and a few airports, but assume you need one unless you have checked that you fall inside it.

Visa-required, but eligible for an eTA anyway

There is a route in between. Some travellers from visa-required countries can apply for an eTA rather than a visa — typically those who have held a Canadian visa in recent years, or who hold a valid United States non-immigrant visa, and who are flying. Which nationalities this covers is decided by IRCC and has changed more than once in the last few years, so it is worth confirming rather than assuming from something you read a while ago.

What it costs and how long it takes

An eTA is inexpensive — a few dollars, paid by card at the end of the form — and it is valid for five years or until your passport expires, whichever comes first. Most applications are approved within minutes of submitting. A minority are held while IRCC asks for documents, and those take days rather than minutes, which is the reason not to apply the night before a flight.

Apply on canada.ca and nowhere else

This is the most common way people lose money on an eTA. A number of commercial websites sell "eTA application services" for many times the official fee, and some of them rank above the government's own page in search results. The only place to apply is canada.ca. Skylam does not charge for filling in an eTA form, and neither should anybody else.

Where Skylam comes in

For most people, nowhere — and we would rather say so than sell you something. Two situations are worth a conversation. The first is if you are not certain whether you need an eTA or a visa, because getting that wrong costs a trip rather than a fee. The second is if you have ever been refused entry to Canada, refused a visa, or have a criminal record of any kind: an eTA application asks about all three, answering wrongly is misrepresentation, and answering correctly without preparing the file usually produces a refusal that then has to be declared for years afterwards.