Being inadmissible is not a permanent bar in most cases. It is a legal finding with named exits: a temporary resident permit for an urgent trip, criminal rehabilitation for a permanent fix, or an authorisation to return if you were removed. The exit you qualify for depends on the ground and the clock.
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From $3,388.87 taxes included
Inadmissibility is set out in Division 4 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The main grounds are security, human or international rights violations, serious criminality and criminality, organised criminality, health, financial reasons, misrepresentation, failing to comply with the Act, and being the family member of an inadmissible person.
Which ground applies decides everything that follows. Criminality has rehabilitation routes and time limits. Misrepresentation has a fixed bar and no rehabilitation. Medical inadmissibility is answered with a mitigation plan, not with time. Getting the label wrong means applying for the wrong remedy and waiting months to be told so.
The distinction between criminality and serious criminality does the heaviest lifting. Serious criminality covers a conviction outside Canada for an offence that, if committed in Canada, would carry a maximum term of at least ten years; for a conviction in Canada, either that ten-year maximum or a term of imprisonment of more than six months actually imposed. Since impaired driving became punishable by a ten-year maximum in Canada in December 2018, a single old DUI abroad can land in the serious category.
Deemed rehabilitation happens by operation of law, with no application. It is generally available where at least ten years have passed since you completed all sentences imposed, the offence would not be serious criminality in Canada, and you have no other indictable-equivalent convictions. Two or more summary-equivalent offences are treated differently. Serious criminality is never cured this way.
Individual rehabilitation is an application to IRCC, available once five years have passed since you completed your sentence — including fines paid, probation served and licence suspensions ended. Approval is permanent for the offences disclosed. It is a document-heavy application: certified court records, police certificates from every country of residence, and a candid account of what happened and what changed.
A temporary resident permit is the short-term answer when you cannot wait. An officer weighs your need to enter against the risk you pose, and issues a permit for a defined purpose and period. It is discretionary, it can be refused at the border, and it does not fix the underlying inadmissibility — but it is often the only thing that gets you to a funeral, a closing or a trade show next month.
Canadian convictions are different again: a record suspension from the Parole Board of Canada, not IRCC rehabilitation, is the relevant route.
A misrepresentation finding under section 40 makes you inadmissible for five years and there is no rehabilitation application to shorten it. It does not require lying deliberately — withholding a material fact that could induce an error in the administration of the Act is enough, and a fact you thought was irrelevant can qualify. The place to fight it is at the procedural fairness letter stage, before the finding is made.
Medical inadmissibility runs on two tracks: danger to public health or safety, and excessive demand on health or social services. Excessive demand is measured against a published cost threshold that is updated annually, and several categories of applicant are exempt from it altogether. Where it applies, the answer is a credible mitigation plan showing how care will be funded without drawing on public services.
Financial inadmissibility applies where you are unwilling or unable to support yourself and your dependants. It is answered with evidence, not argument. If you were previously removed from Canada, you may also need an authorisation to return before any new application can succeed, and that is a separate approval on top of everything else.
The first hour is spent identifying the ground and the date the clock started, because those two facts eliminate most of the options. Sentence completion, not conviction date, is what usually governs — and people routinely get it wrong by years because they forget a probation end date or an unpaid fine.
Then we get the primary records. Foreign court dispositions, statutes showing the maximum penalty in the foreign jurisdiction, and an equivalency analysis against the Criminal Code. Equivalency is legal work: what an offence is called abroad matters far less than what its elements are in Canadian terms, and a careful equivalency argument sometimes moves a file out of serious criminality entirely.
Our flat fee for this work starts at $3,388.87, taxes included. Government application fees, police certificates and translation costs are billed separately at cost, itemised and estimated before you commit.
Not without a remedy. Impaired driving carries a ten-year maximum in Canada, which puts it in the serious criminality category, and serious criminality cannot be cured by the passage of time alone. Your options are a temporary resident permit for a specific trip, or individual rehabilitation once five years have passed since you finished your sentence — including fines, probation and any licence suspension. Turning up at the border to argue it is a poor plan; officers have your record before you reach the booth.
Five years from the day you completed the sentence, not the day you were convicted or sentenced. Completion means everything: custody served, probation finished, fines and restitution paid in full, driving prohibitions expired. If you paid a fine late, the clock started when you paid. Applications filed early are refused and the fee is not refunded, so the single most valuable thing you can do first is pin down the true completion date with documents.
No. There is no rehabilitation application for misrepresentation and no early forgiveness once the finding is made. What can be done is to attack the finding itself — on judicial review if it was made unreasonably, or by responding properly to the procedural fairness letter before an officer makes it. During the ban, an application for permanent residence generally cannot succeed, though a temporary resident permit may still be available for a compelling reason.
It is a discretionary permit letting an inadmissible person enter or stay in Canada when the officer judges that the need to come outweighs the risk. Length is set by the officer and tied to the stated purpose — sometimes a single entry for a few days, sometimes multiple entries over a longer period. It can be cancelled. Because it is discretionary, the application lives or dies on how concretely you document the reason for the trip and how thoroughly you address the risk.
Sometimes, and it depends on the foreign law and how closely it resembles a Canadian record suspension. A foreign discharge, dismissal or set-aside is not automatically recognised. Canadian officers look at the substance of the foreign process, not its name, so the analysis needs the foreign statute in front of it. Bring the disposition documents and the governing legislation to the first meeting; without them nobody can give you a reliable answer.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.