The short answer: nothing was wrong with your answers — the session expired. The eTA form cannot be saved, there is no draft and no resume link, and when the session dies you lose the entire form, not just the last screen. There is nothing to recover on IRCC’s side. You have to fill it in again. The fix is preparation, not speed. Put the passport, the payment card, your employer and home addresses and your travel dates on the desk before you open the form, then do it in one sitting. Our first Canada eTA application checklist is that list, and the field-by-field guide to the application form shows you every question before you meet it, so the second attempt takes minutes. ...

The short answer: “Transaction Approved” means your card was charged. It is not your eTA and it is not a decision. Your application has been submitted and paid for; nobody has looked at it yet. The answer comes later, by email only — so check your spam folder. Save that screen before you close the tab. IRCC does not let you print it later and will not send you a copy. Print it, save it as a PDF, or screenshot it now. ...

The short answer: open your passport to the photo page, find the field labelled “Code”, “Issuing country”, “Authority” or “Country code”, and select that exact value in the dropdown. Do not work it out from the name of your country — Germany is listed as D, not DEU, and the United Kingdom has six separate entries. And being in the list means nothing about eligibility: it holds all 214 passport-issuing authorities in the world, including countries whose citizens need a visa rather than an eTA. ...

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. ...

You open your inbox expecting two identical approval emails and find something else entirely: your child’s eTA came through, and yours is still sitting at pending. Same day of application, same destination, same flight. The mismatch feels like a signal that something went wrong. It isn’t. Each application is assessed independently. Your own application is still in the queue, and the gap between the two outcomes tells you nothing about whether yours will be approved. ...

An “Other Reasons” eTA refusal means the automated system found something in your application or background that it couldn’t approve, without telling you what it was. “Other Reasons” feels like a door slammed in your face with no explanation, but it isn’t random and it isn’t necessarily permanent — it points to one of a small number of underlying issues that Canadian immigration systems flag automatically, and most of those issues can be investigated, addressed, or worked around. ...

TL;DR An eTA is electronically linked to the specific passport used when you applied. If that passport is gone, expired, or not the one in your hand, the eTA attached to it cannot be used to board a flight to Canada. You’ll need a new eTA tied to your current passport. If you still have the old passport physically, you might wonder if it can be used alongside your new one. ...

Yes, disclose everything the application asks about. The eTA form puts direct questions about your immigration history, and the only correct approach is to answer them fully and accurately. Omitting a refusal because you think it weakens your application is not a grey area: Canadian immigration law treats withholding material information the same way it treats providing false information, and either can lead to inadmissibility to Canada. That is the short answer. What follows is the practical guide to what the form asks, what each type of history means for your application, and how to handle the situations that are genuinely complicated. ...

The short answer is: it depends on what’s in your past, and it depends on honesty. A criminal record or a previous refusal doesn’t automatically close the door to a Canada eTA, but it does change the process and, in some cases, means you’ll need to take steps before you even submit an eTA application. Where you fall on that spectrum comes down to the nature of the offence, how long ago it happened, and what you’ve done since. ...

You’re at the check-in desk, or about to book an urgent flight home, and you’ve just realised your Canadian passport expired months ago. The question running through your head is whether your citizenship alone gets you on the plane, and whether an eTA is somehow the workaround. Here’s the direct answer: Canadian citizens never need an eTA to fly to Canada — but they do need a valid Canadian passport to board the flight. An expired passport creates a real boarding problem, not an entry problem. Your citizenship hasn’t changed; what’s missing is the document airlines and border officials need to confirm it. The eTA is simply not relevant to your situation: it’s a requirement for foreign nationals from visa-exempt countries, not for Canadians. If you want to understand more about what an eTA is and who it applies to, see our what is a Canada eTA overview, or review our first Canada eTA application checklist if a companion in your group needs to apply. ...