The short answer: if you hold a normal passport, select “Passport - ordinary/regular” and move on. The only people who need to think about this field are those holding a government, emergency, refugee or non-citizen travel document. And if your passport is a government one, the deciding factor is not your job title — it is the word printed on the front cover: official or service.
The document you name here is the one your eTA attaches to, so it must be the one you will physically hand over at check-in. The rest of the form is covered in our field-by-field guide to the Canada eTA application, and the dropdown that comes immediately after this one in which passport country code to select.
Below is each of the nine options with IRCC’s own definition, taken from the help text behind the question mark on the form.
The field, as the form words it
The second screen of the eTA application asks:
What travel document do you plan to use to travel to Canada? (required)
Nine options follow. Most applicants want the first one and can move on in two seconds. But four of the nine are close enough to each other that people genuinely cannot tell which applies to them — and two of them, official and service, have word-for-word identical definitions in IRCC’s own help text.
Below is each option with the definition IRCC shows when you click the question mark beside the field, and what it means in practice.
Passport - ordinary/regular
A passport issued to citizens for occasional travel, such as vacations and business trips.
This is the standard passport almost everyone holds. If you have never worked for a government in a capacity that got you a different colour of passport, this is your answer. Choose it and move on.
Passport - diplomatic
A passport issued to citizens who are high-ranking government officials, diplomats, and representatives and delegates of a government.
Issued to diplomats and senior officials. If you hold one, you know it — it is issued deliberately and for a defined role.
Passport - official
A passport normally issued to citizens, such as non-diplomatic government officials, traveling on official government business. Use if the front cover of your passport says ‘official’.
Passport - service
A passport normally issued to citizens, such as non-diplomatic government officials, traveling on official government business. Use if the front cover of your passport says ‘service’.
Read those two definitions again. The first sentence is identical. The only thing that separates them is the last sentence, and that is deliberate: the question is not what your role is, it is what word is printed on the cover of the book in your hand.
Different countries use different terminology for what is essentially the same category of non-diplomatic government travel document. IRCC has sidestepped the terminology problem entirely by telling you to read the cover. So do that: look at the front of the passport, find the word, and select the option that matches it. Do not reason about your job title.
Emergency/temporary travel document
A travel document or passport issued to citizens in urgent cases where the issuance of a temporary passport is not possible. These documents are often valid for a short period of time.
Issued when a normal passport cannot be produced in time — typically after loss or theft abroad. These are usually valid for weeks or months rather than years.
A practical warning: your eTA is tied to the document you name here, and it can be valid for up to five years or until the passport expires, whichever comes first. An eTA attached to an emergency document dies with that document. When you get your normal passport back, you will need a new eTA against it.
Refugee travel document
A travel document issued to non-citizens with protected-person status, including Convention refugees and persons in need of protection.
The document issued under the Refugee Convention to people with protected-person status in the country where they live.
Alien passport/travel document issued to non-citizens
A passport or travel document issued to non-citizens who live either permanently or temporarily in the country that issued the document, but are not citizens of that country.
Issued to residents who are not citizens — including stateless people and long-term residents who cannot obtain their own country’s passport. The issuing country is on the document; your nationality may be something else entirely, or nothing, and there are separate fields later in the form for that.
Permit to re-enter the United States (I-327)
A travel document issued by United States (U.S.) Citizenship and Immigration Services to U.S. lawful permanent residents to allow them to travel abroad and return to the U.S. without having to get a returning resident visa.
The US re-entry permit. Note the wider context here: since April 26, 2022, lawful permanent residents of the United States are exempt from the eTA requirement when flying to Canada, and travel with their passport plus proof of status instead. Before applying with an I-327, confirm whether you need an eTA at all.
United States refugee travel document (I-571)
A travel document issued by United States (U.S.) Citizenship and Immigration Services to non-citizens who have been recognized as refugees or granted asylum.
The US refugee travel document, issued to people granted asylum or recognized as refugees in the United States.
Why this field matters more than it looks
Your answer here decides what kind of record IRCC creates, and it sits alongside the passport number as one of the values the airline checks at the gate. The document type, the passport number and the issuing country code all have to describe the same physical book.
IRCC’s warning about mismatches, from its own instructions page:
If you enter the wrong passport number OR country code, you may not be able to board your flight to Canada. You may only find out at the airport if you made a mistake. You’ll have to reapply for an eTA at the airport.
There is no edit function after you submit, and the $7 fee is not refundable. Reapplying is the only repair.
One more thing that follows from this field: an eTA is attached to one document. If you hold two passports, the eTA belongs to the one you named here, and that is the one you must present at check-in — not the other one, even if both are valid and both are yours.
The short version
- Ordinary or regular passport? Pick the first option, you are done.
- Official and service are distinguished by the word on the front cover, not by your role. Read the cover.
- Emergency and temporary documents expire fast, and the eTA expires with them.
- If you are a US lawful permanent resident, check whether you need an eTA at all before filling this in.
- The eTA attaches to this one document. Travel on it.
The rest of the form, screen by screen and in IRCC’s own wording, is in our field-by-field guide to the Canada eTA application form. The dropdown immediately after this one is covered in which passport country code to select.