Hi all, thank you for sharing all the useful info. Much appreciated.
I have one question about the recent change - since January 11, 2024 the Appostille Convention came into effect in Canada. Did anybody get contacted about getting the documents like a Police certificate or Education/Diploma authenticated with Apostille?
Thank you.
My understanding is that so far - very tentative, based on minimal info - the approach has been to primarily allow Canadians the ability to get documents authenticated in a recognized way abroad (as some countries are quite specific about what they will accept), and that - again tentatively - Canada has not been asking for or requiring docs to be apostilled. (That said I think the convention requires that Canada accept apostilled documents, it just doesn't mean that Canada has to require it.)
So I would suggest for most applicants:
-Follow the existing instructions and don't go out of your way to get docs apostilled, esp if the existing approach is well known and works.
-In some countries and jurisidictions, it MIGHT be useful to use apostille if the existing requirements are not reliable or very unclear.
But as far as I'm aware in most cases it's just an extra step that Cnada doesn't require.
Examples? I don't know. One example might be some latin american countries where some docs have to be 'notarized' at government offices/ can only be notarized at govt offices. But the thing is - that's basically what the apostille process is anyway (except that perhaps has to have foreign or justice ministry stamp added, I dunno).
Other cases: well, one example might be USA, but I'm kind of speculating - there's an ongoing issue where IRCC is confused by the handful of states in which the document entitled 'marriage license' is actually also the marriage certificate (when completed/registered by the county or equivalent). Maybe you could get that authenticated/apostilled to prove to IRCC that it actually is also the marriage license. On the other hand, most of the time applciants from those states eventually get IRCC to take the doc.
I'm sure there are some other corner cases where it may be useful but I don't knwo about them.
FWIW/AFAIK/etc.