Which passport you use for a Canada-bound flight depends on your citizenship status. The rules differ significantly depending on whether one of your citizenships is Canadian.
Dual Canadian citizens: a Canadian passport is required for air travel
Dual Canadian citizens can no longer travel to or transit through Canada by air with a non-Canadian passport. Canadian citizens, including dual citizens, can’t apply for an eTA and need a valid Canadian passport to travel to Canada by air.
Specifically, you must present a valid Canadian passport, a Canadian temporary passport, or a Canadian emergency travel document so that airline check-in staff and border officials can confirm your Canadian citizenship.
If you’re travelling by land or sea, you can use another identification document.
The American-Canadian exception
American-Canadian citizens can travel with a valid Canadian or U.S. passport. If you’re travelling with a U.S. passport, you do not need a Canadian passport, a Canadian visa or an eTA to fly to Canada — but you’ll need to carry identification that shows your Canadian citizenship.
Travellers with two non-Canadian citizenships
If neither of your citizenships is Canadian, the applicable rule depends on which country issued your passport. Citizens of eTA-required countries need an electronic travel authorization (eTA) and a valid passport to board a flight to Canada; no visitor visa is required. U.S. citizens are exempt from the eTA requirement and must carry proper identification such as a valid U.S. passport.
In most cases, if you’re from an eTA-required country and you’re arriving by car, bus, train or boat (including a cruise ship), you don’t need an eTA to enter Canada, though you still need a valid passport.
If you hold a passport from a visa-required country, you may be eligible to apply for an eTA instead of a visitor visa when travelling to Canada by air — but only if your country is among the select eligible countries where this option is available.
Use the official entry-document checker to identify the document you may need. This tool may not provide information on all entry documents or your particular situation.
Canadian permanent residents
You don’t need an eTA or a visitor visa if you’re a Canadian permanent resident. You must travel with a valid permanent resident card or permanent resident travel document.
Do not assume that holding another citizenship changes the documents required for your permanent-resident travel.
Why Dual Citizenship Doesn’t Simplify the Choice
It’s tempting to assume that holding two passports means picking whichever one is more convenient for a given trip, but Canada’s rules don’t work that way for Canadian dual citizens. As covered above, a Canadian dual citizen doesn’t get to choose the non-Canadian passport for an air trip to Canada — the Canadian document is required, full stop, with the single carved-out exception for American-Canadian citizens. For dual citizens holding two non-Canadian passports, there’s more flexibility in principle, but each passport still has to be checked separately against the eTA-required or visa-required rules for that specific country, since one passport being eligible doesn’t make the other one eligible too. Whichever passport ends up eligible, it also has to be the one actually presented at check-in and at the border — a traveller can’t apply using one passport and then carry the other on the day of travel.
What Changes If Your Non-Canadian Passport Expires
Since an eTA is linked to one specific passport, a dual national travelling on a non-Canadian passport faces the same renewal rule as any other eTA holder: a new or replacement passport requires a new eTA. This is worth checking well before a trip, since a passport renewal that happens to fall between two visits to Canada is easy to overlook when citizenship status itself hasn’t changed at all. The eTA record only knows the passport number it was issued against — it has no way to recognize that a new document belongs to the same person.
Before you book
- Confirm your citizenship and permanent-resident status; do not assume an old status has lapsed.
- Check the expiry date of the passport required for your category.
- Use Canada’s official entry-document checker for your exact passport and method of travel.
- If you hold two non-Canadian passports, check each one separately against Canada’s current requirements.