Visitor Visa

A visitor visa — IRCC calls it a temporary resident visa — is the document that lets you travel to Canada for a short stay: a holiday, a family visit, a conference, a business meeting. It is a sticker placed in your passport, and it is what you show when you board.

Visa or eTA? It depends on your passport, not your trip

This is the question most people actually have. Canada divides travellers into two groups by nationality.

If you hold a passport from a visa-required country, you need a visitor visa, whether you arrive by air, land or sea. If you hold a passport from a visa-exempt country, you do not — you need an Electronic Travel Authorization instead, which is a much lighter process, and only if you are flying. The same trip, made by two people with different passports, needs two different documents.

There are exceptions in both directions, including for permanent residents of the United States and for some travellers who have held a Canadian visa before. If you are not certain which group you are in, that is worth ten minutes with a consultant before you pay for anything.

What the visa does and does not give you

A visitor visa lets you travel to a Canadian port of entry. It does not decide how long you may stay, and it is not a guarantee of entry. That decision is made by a border services officer when you arrive, and the period they grant — usually six months — is what governs your stay. Check the date they give you rather than assuming.

A visitor visa does not allow you to work, and it does not allow you to study for more than a short course. Doing either on a visitor status is the kind of mistake that follows somebody through every later application.

Single entry and multiple entry

Most visitor visas issued now are multiple-entry, valid for up to ten years or until the passport expires, whichever comes first. You do not choose between them or pay differently — IRCC decides which to issue. A multiple-entry visa lets you come and go for as long as it is valid; each visit is still assessed at the border.

How long it takes

Processing times vary enormously by where you apply from — the current range runs from a couple of weeks to well over a year. The lookup further down this page gives IRCC's current figure for your own country, taken from the department's published data and updated daily.

Where Skylam comes in

Visitor applications are refused more often than people expect, and almost always for the same reason: the officer was not satisfied the applicant would leave at the end of the stay. That is a judgement about ties — employment, family, property, previous travel — and it is made on the documents you file, not on your intentions. A refusal also has to be declared on every application you make afterwards, to Canada and to other countries, which is why the first attempt is worth preparing properly.