A conviction, a medical condition, a removal order or a mistake on a form can close the door to Canada. Most of these have a remedy, and one of the most useful costs nothing and needs no application at all. The trick is knowing which one applies to you.
Different problems have completely different remedies, and one of the most valuable is automatic and free. People pay for applications they never needed, and file applications that were never going to work.
Four questions. This identifies which remedy applies to your situation, what it costs, and whether you need to apply at all. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
The sentence is finished only when everything is done: jail time served, probation ended, all fines and restitution paid.
This is the Canadian equivalent, not the penalty you actually received abroad. It is the single most important fact and it is frequently misjudged.
Many people pay for an application they never needed. Deemed rehabilitation is automatic, requires no application and costs nothing.
It applies where the conviction was outside Canada, the equivalent Canadian offence carries a maximum under ten years, and enough time has passed: ten years from completion of the sentence for a single conviction, or five years where there are several and all equate to Canadian summary offences.
Three things end it. It never applies to serious criminality, meaning an equivalent Canadian maximum of ten years or more. It never applies to convictions in Canada. And a later offence removes the deeming for everything before it.
If your case is borderline, applying anyway has one real advantage: you get a formal decision rather than an argument with an officer at the border while your family waits.
Not rehabilitation, which surprises nearly everyone. Both criminal rehabilitation and deemed rehabilitation apply only to convictions and acts outside Canada.
For a Canadian conviction the route is a record suspension from the Parole Board of Canada, formerly called a pardon. That is a separate process with its own eligibility rules, and it is not an immigration application.
Once a record suspension is granted and not revoked, the conviction can no longer ground inadmissibility. A final acquittal has the same effect.
In the meantime, a temporary resident permit can allow entry or a stay, though it does not cure the underlying problem.
It depends on the date of the offence, not the date of conviction, and that single fact decides the outcome.
On 18 December 2018 the maximum penalty for most impaired driving offences rose from five years to ten, which moved it into serious criminality. For offences on or after that date, deemed rehabilitation is unavailable and criminal rehabilitation carries the higher fee of $1,231.
For offences committed before that date, IRCC assesses admissibility on the penalties in force at the time. That often means simple criminality instead, and the ten year deemed rehabilitation route may be open.
Two further points. A conviction in Canada means a record suspension is the only route. And any prison sentence longer than six months triggers serious criminality regardless of the maximum penalty.
A permit under section 24 lets an officer allow someone into Canada, or let them stay, despite an inadmissibility. It is the bridge when the underlying problem cannot be fixed yet.
It is discretionary, can be issued for up to three years, and can be cancelled at any time. It costs $246.25, and it is not valid after you leave Canada unless it expressly says so. It does not cure the inadmissibility; it suspends the consequence.
The fee is waived entirely for victims of human trafficking, victims of family violence, and former youth in state care. A trafficking victim is not required to assist an investigation to obtain one.
Two bars matter. You cannot request a permit while a pre-removal risk assessment is pending after an ineligible refugee claim, and you cannot request one within twelve months of a refused, withdrawn or abandoned claim.
The case turns on whether your reason for coming outweighs the risk. That argument has to be built, not asserted.
Often not. Medical inadmissibility has three grounds, and only one is about money: excessive demand on health or social services.
For 2026 the threshold is $144,390 over five years, which is $28,878 a year. Excessive demand can also be found where services would negatively affect wait times, independently of cost.
Many people are exempt from excessive demand altogether: spouses, partners and children sponsored in the family class, refugees, protected persons and certain of their family members. Check this before anything else, because it disposes of the issue entirely. The exemption does not cover public health or public safety grounds.
If you receive a procedural fairness letter you have 90 days to respond, and that is the moment that matters. A mitigation plan showing how costs would be met privately can change the decision. Families are frequently caught by special education costs rather than medical ones, which surprises people.
Usually yes, but which order you were given changes everything, and the document says which it is.
A departure order requires you to leave within 30 days and obtain a Certificate of Departure. Do that and no authorization is needed. Miss the 30 days and it automatically becomes a deportation order, which is far worse.
An exclusion order bars return for one year, or five years if it was issued for misrepresentation.
A deportation order is a permanent bar and an Authorization to Return to Canada is always required. That costs $492.50, and you must also resolve the underlying inadmissibility before it will be granted.
Two traps. The order must have been properly enforced, meaning you appeared before an officer and obtained a Certificate of Departure. And if CBSA paid for your removal you must repay it, which since April 2025 is $13,098.96 for an escorted air removal or $3,905.28 unescorted.
Take it seriously and act immediately. A procedural fairness letter is the officer telling you their concern before deciding, and giving you the chance to answer. It is the best moment you will get.
For medical concerns the response period is 90 days from the date of the letter, and extensions must be requested. For other concerns, including misrepresentation, the deadline is stated in the letter itself, so read it carefully and diarise it.
What works is answering the specific concern with evidence, not writing a general appeal for sympathy. If a representative completed your forms, say so. If there was a genuine misunderstanding, explain how it arose and document it.
What does not work is ignoring it, or withdrawing and quietly filing a fresh application. The concern follows you, and a misrepresentation finding carries a five year bar on returning and on applying for permanent residence.
It can. Under section 42 a foreign national may be inadmissible because an accompanying family member is inadmissible, or in prescribed circumstances a non-accompanying one.
There is an important limit for temporary residents. If you are applying for or holding temporary status, a family member's inadmissibility only affects you if it falls under the serious grounds: security, human rights violations, sanctions or organised crime. Ordinary criminality or medical grounds affecting a relative do not bar a temporary applicant.
Protected persons are excluded from this provision entirely.
Where it does apply, the fix is usually to resolve the family member's own inadmissibility, or to consider whether they need to be included at all. That is a strategic decision worth taking advice on before filing.
Honestly, longer than you would like. IRCC states that criminal rehabilitation applications can take over a year. Ministerial relief for the most serious grounds has no predictable timeline at all, and CBSA says so plainly.
Two things make this worth starting early. Rehabilitation, once granted, is permanent for the offences it covers, so it is done rather than revisited every time you travel. And obtaining foreign court records gets harder every year, not easier.
The most common expensive mistake we see is people applying for the wrong thing: paying $1,231 when the offence was not serious criminality, applying for rehabilitation when they were already deemed rehabilitated, or seeking rehabilitation for a Canadian conviction that needs a record suspension instead.
An hour spent establishing the Canadian equivalent offence and the exact completion date of the sentence answers nearly all of it. That is the conversation worth having first.
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Fees, thresholds and cost recovery amounts change every year, and the medical threshold is recalculated annually. Follow our journal so you are working from current figures.
