Канадалық паспорттар: тарихы мен қазіргі жағдайы

Passport issued to citizens of Canada

All Canadian passports are issued through the Passport Program of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). Prior to 1 July 2013, Canadian passports were issued through Passport Canada, an independent operating agency of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. Passports are normally valid for five or ten years for persons 16 years of age and older, and five years for children under 16. Although held by individual citizens, all Canadian passports legally remain the property of the Crown and must be returned to the Passport Program upon request. Canada is a member of the Five Nations Passport Group, an international forum for cooperation between the passport issuing authorities of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States in order to "share best practices and discuss innovations related to the development of passport policies, products and practices". Canada began issuing biometric passports, also known as electronic passports or e passports, to Canadian citizens on 1 July 2013. A new passport featuring more security features and artwork was rolled out in summer 2023.

The first Canadian passports were issued in 1862 following the outbreak of the American Civil War, when the United States demanded more secure identification from Canadians wishing to cross the border. They took the form of a "Letter of Request" from the Governor General of Canada. These documents remained in use until 1915, when Canadian passports were first issued in the British format, a ten section single sheet folder. The modern form of the Canadian passport came about in 1921. At that time, Canadians were British subjects, and Canada shared a common nationality with the United Kingdom; thus, Canadian passports were issued to those British subjects resident in or connected to Canada. This arrangement ended in 1947, when the Canadian Citizenship Act was granted Royal Assent and the designation of Canadian citizenship was created. Beginning in July the following year, Canadian passports were issued to Canadian citizens only. However, the first page of Canadian Passports still declared that "A Canadian Citizen is a British Subject", as such was a main clause of the Citizenship Act 1946. This would remain until the Act was overhauled and replaced by the Citizenship Act 1976, after which the phrase on the first page of Canadian Passports was changed to read: "The bearer of this passport is a Canadian citizen." Between 1947 and 1970, Canadian citizens could only apply for passports by mail to Ottawa. Requirements were simple, and applicants claiming birth in Canada did not have to provide proof of birth. The lax security led to numerous cases of misuse of the passport, so the Canadian Government tightened the application requirements from 1970. That year, the first three Passport Canada offices were opened in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. In 1985, the first version of MRPs was issued, in accordance with International Civil Aviation Organization standards. An amended version came into circulation in 1991, with additional security features and more stringent processing requirements. By 1993, a newer version of MRP was introduced, which contained unique features to prevent replication or alteration. A pilot project began in 2009, with e passports being issued to special and diplomatic passport applicants. The e passport roll out was pushed back to 1 July 2013. On the same day, the issuing authority of Canadian passports was shifted from Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada to Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), now known as IRCC. This Order in Council specifies grounds for which Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) can issue or renew a passport.

Under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, all Canadian citizens have the right to enter Canada. Since 10 November 2016, under the new visa regulations all visa free passport holders (except for U. S. citizens and nationals) are required to apply for an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) before boarding a flight to Canada. This means there is now a de facto requirement for Canadian citizens to use a Canadian passport when travelling to or transiting through Canada by air, unless a special authorization is obtained within 10 days of travel. As the eTA is used for the sole purpose of immigration screening for non Canadian visitors entering Canada on a temporary basis, all Canadian citizens are automatically barred from applying the eTA. Hence the passport requirement is in place, because a Canadian citizen who travels on a visa free, non Canadian passport will be prevented from boarding the commercial flight to Canada unless the passenger can present a valid Canadian passport during check in. The only exceptions to this rule are for a Canadian citizen travelling on a U. S. passport, as Americans do not need an eTA to enter Canada, or when a Canadian citizen travelling on an eTA required passport enters Canada by sea, through one of the land ports of entry from the U. S., or holds a special authorization (which is free and available to anyone who has previously held a Canadian passport or Canadian citizenship certificate).

Canadians in Canada can submit their applications in person through a passport office, a Service Canada location, or can submit their applications by mail. Canadians in the U. S. or Bermuda can apply only by mail. Canadians living in other countries or territories are required to apply through the nearest Canadian diplomatic posts abroad. Expedited services (urgent, express and standard pick ups) are only available through a passport office in Canada.

The Canadian passport issuing system is modelled after the United Kingdom, where all first time passport applications are required to be "countersigned" by a person who has known the applicant for a minimum of 2 years. Australia and New Zealand have similar policies. The use of a guarantor is to serve "as a security measure in the entitlement process and as a point of departure for the future investigation of statements made on the application form". Rules regarding the eligibility of guarantors were last updated on 12 August 2013. For passport applicants in Canada, only a Canadian passport holder can be a guarantor. For Canadian citizens living abroad who do not have a Canadian guarantor, a non Canadian guarantor who works in a licensed profession may be used for application, such as a dentist, medical doctor, judge, lawyer, notary public, pharmacist, police officer, veterinarian, or sitting officer for a financial institution.

The fee (since 1 July 2013) for a standard adult passport issued in Canada is $120 for a five year passport or $160 for a ten year passport, and outside of Canada is $190 and $260 respectively. The fee for a five year passport for a child under 16 is $57 if issued in Canada, and $100 outside of Canada. Additional fees are levied for urgent service or replacement of a lost or stolen passport. All fees are payable in Canadian dollars.

IRCC may revoke a passport or refuse to issue or renew a passport on grounds set out in the Canadian Passport Order, including such grounds as failure to submit a complete application, misrepresentation in obtaining a passport, and criminality. However, whether a Canadian passport may be revoked or refused on the basis of national security concerns has been questioned.

On 24 August 2017 the Canadian government announced that it would implement procedures for Canadians who wish to have their sex given as X (unspecified) on Canadian passports, which is one of the three permitted sex designations for machine readable passports along with M (male) and F (female) specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization. As an interim measure until IRCC became able to print passports with X sex designations, effective 31 August 2017 IRCC offered passports with a note on the Observations page indicating that the passport holder should be identified as X rather than the printed sex designation on the data page. Since 11 July 2019, the X designation has been printed on the data page, although travellers are warned that other countries may insist on a male or female designation.

The place of birth is inscribed under the following format: CITYNAME UTO, where "UTO" is the ISO 3166 1 alpha 3 country code of the country of birth. The first level administrative country subdivision of birth, such as the Canadian province (or the U. S. state), is not mentioned as a part of place of birth. So Canadian citizens born in Richmond, British Columbia; Richmond, Quebec; or Richmond, Nova Scotia would have the same inscription as place of birth, RICHMOND CAN; a Canadian citizen born in Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon would both have PORTLAND USA. Exceptions to this format are listed below. A passport applicant may request, in writing, that IRCC not list the place of birth (city and country)—or country of birth—on their data page, by filling out PPTC 077. The applicant must indicate his or her awareness that omitting this information could cause difficulties at international entry points or when applying for visas.

In response to the Chinese government's modification of requirements for the issuance of visas to Canadian citizens born in Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, Canadian passports issued to Canadians born in Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan are now issued only with the place of birth and not the three letter country code. Chinese visas will no longer be issued to Canadian passport holders whose place of birth is inscribed as Hong Kong HKG, Macau MAC, or TWN.

Since April 1976, the policy has been that Canadian citizens born in Jerusalem have their birthplace identified only by the city's name, with no national designation, due to the unresolved legal status of Jerusalem. However, Canadian citizens born prior to 14 May 1948 may have their birthplace identified as Palestine if they were born in what was the British Mandate of Palestine (including Jerusalem).

In September 2003, Le Devoir printed a letter calling on Passport Canada to give individual Canadians the choice of which official language appeared first in their passports, English or French. The Passport Office claimed that this was not allowed under international norms, but it was shown that Belgian passport applications asked Belgian citizens which of their country's three official languages (Dutch, French or German) should appear first in their passports.

In 2008, Passport Canada announced that it would be issuing electronic passports to Canadian travellers starting in 2012. The e passport will have an electronic chip encoded with the bearer's name, gender, and date and place of birth and a digital portrait of their face. On 7 April 2010, Passport Canada announced that in 2012, Canada will begin issuing electronic passports, or ePassports, to all its citizens. Passport Canada states that "the use of ePassports will allow Canada to follow international standards in the field of passport security to protect the nation's borders and maintain the ease of international travel that Canadians currently enjoy. At the same time, Passport Canada will start offering the option of a 10 year validity period as well as the current 5 year validity period." In September 2011, Passport Canada announced that the electronic passport would be ready by the end of 2012, however this was pushed back to 2013 when the organisation found significant delay because of an increase in passport applications for revised entry policies to the United States in the late 2000s and a lengthy consultation process was needed to survey public reactions to the new passport changes. All Canadian passports issued on or after 1 July 2013 have been ePassports. Under the proposed system modelled after New Zealand, passport holders would no longer need to return their old passports to CIC for cancellation, but can instead apply for a new passport online while keeping the old documents before they receive the new ones. Instead of returning the old passports, applicants would be asked to cut the corners of these documents "through an honour system". The new process was expected to be available in November 2015, however the plan was cancelled in October when the use of GCMS for passport applications was temporarily suspended due to numerous security glitches in the system. IRCC permanently suspended the use of GCMS for passport applications in February 2016 following an internal audit. GCMS will not be used for passport applications until all risks, which include "Passport Program business requirements", are identified and secured.

On May 10, 2023, the government of Canada announced a new design for the Canadian passport. Printing of the new passport started in summer 2023 and it became available on June 18, 2023.

Since its introduction, the Canadian passport has been a target of counterfeiters, criminals and agents of foreign governments. The reasons for such high number of misuses include the relative lax issuance process before 1970,
In 1940, Ramón Mercader, a Spanish national, travelled to Mexico City on a fraudulent Canadian passport to assassinate Leon Trotsky. In 1961, Konon Molody used a fraudulently obtained passport of deceased Canadian Arnold Lonsdale. Using this identity he engaged in espionage activities in the United Kingdom. In 1997, Israeli secret service personnel again botched an assassination bid while using Canadian passports. The attempt against Khaled Mashal in Jordan resulted in the arrest of the would be killers. The Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy eventually received an apology and a written assurance that Mossad would desist from using Canadian passports. Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian al Qaeda Millennium Bomber who attempted to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve 1999/2000, evaded deportation by Canada and travelled freely to and from Canada by using a Canadian passport he obtained in March 1998 by submitting a fraudulent baptismal certificate; he used a stolen blank certificate, filling it in with a fictitious name. In 2007, a former Canadian bureaucrat pleaded guilty to selling at least 10 fraudulent passports to individuals overseas. A Russian spy involved in the Illegals Program used a Canadian passport to travel to the United States to deliver payment to Russian sleeper agents. The passport was issued to a man known as Christopher Metsos. However, following the public revelation of the spy ring in 2010, Passport Canada revoked the document, saying it had been issued by the Canadian High Commission in Johannesburg, South Africa to a man assuming the identity of a deceased Canadian child. While not a case of misuse as it was conducted with secret approval of the Canadian government, six American diplomats were smuggled out of Iran using authentic Canadian passports containing forged Iranian visas in 1980.

In July 2004, Abdurahman Khadr was denied a Canadian passport by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson on the explicit advice of her Foreign Affairs Minister, Bill Graham, who stated the decision was "in the interest of the national security of Canada and the protection of Canadian troops in Afghanistan". The government invoked Royal Prerogative in order to deny Khadr's passport, as national security was not at that time listed in the Canadian Passport Order as a ground for refusal. Shortly thereafter, on 22 September 2004, section 10.1 was added to the order, which allowed the minister to revoke or refuse a passport due to national security concerns. Khadr sought judicial review of the minister's decision to refuse his passport and, on 8 June of the following year, the Federal Court ruled that the government did not have the power to refuse to issue Khadr's passport in the absence of specific authority set out in the Canadian Passport Order, but stated in obiter dicta that if the order were to be amended, Khadr would likely not be able to challenge the revocation. In 2006, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, then Peter MacKay, again denied Khadr's application, this time invoking section 10.1 of the amended Canadian Passport Order. Section 10.1 was later challenged in Federal Court by Fateh Kamel, whose passport had also been refused for national security reasons. On 13 March 2008, the Federal Court declared section 10.1 of the Canadian Passport Order to be unconstitutional and therefore invalid, though the court suspended its declaration of invalidity for six months in order to allow the government time to amend the order. The federal government launched an appeal at the Federal Court of Appeal and a ruling handed down on 29 January 2009 overturned the lower court decision. The court unanimously agreed the denial of passport service on national security grounds is in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, citing the limitation clause (Section 1) as its main decision point. Kamel launched an appeal in 2009 to the Supreme Court of Canada but the court declined to hear his case and thus ended the legality challenge to the Canadian Passport Order. In 2010, Kamel attempted to re apply for a Canadian passport but was once again refused by the minister on grounds of national security. He sought judicial review but was dismissed by the Federal Court and subsequently by the Federal Court of Appeal in 2013. Kamel did not appeal the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Visa requirements for Canadian citizens are administrative entry restrictions by the authorities of other states placed on citizens of Canada. According to the 2024 Henley Passport Index as of February 2024, holders of a Canadian passport can visit 189 countries and territories without a visa or with a visa on arrival, ranking the Canadian passport 6th in the world (tied with the Czech Republic, Poland and the United States).

Under the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), Canadian citizens can legally work in the U. S. under simplified procedure, known as TN status, if their professions are under USMCA regulations and they have a prearranged full time or part time job with a U. S. employer. Obtaining TN status does not involve getting a physical visa, instead the applicant is required to apply and receive TN status with U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at a U. S. port of entry. The TN status is good for three years once approved and can be renewed indefinitely if working for the same employer, however it may be reviewed and possibly revoked each time the applicant enters the U. S. TN status also does not facilitate the process of obtaining lawful U. S. permanent residency and cannot be used to live in the U. S. permanently. Canadians who want to work in the U. S. with intention to immigrate to the U. S., or who are ineligible for TN status, can also work under the H 1B status. Unlike other nationalities, they are exempted from obtaining the physical visa from a U. S. embassy or consulate. Apart from the visa exemption, other procedures are the same with all foreign nationals.

Under the Jay Treaty signed by the U. S. and Great Britain in 1794, all First Nations born in Canada are entitled to freely enter the U. S. for employment, education, retirement, investing, or immigration. In order to qualify, all eligible persons must provide documentation of their First Nations background at the port of entry. The documentation must be sufficient to show the bearer is "at least 50% of the American Indian race".