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Before Canada grants anyone permanent residence, it checks two things that have nothing to do with your skills, your job or your language scores: whether you have a criminal record, and whether you have a health condition that Canada's rules treat as a problem. The government calls these "admissibility" checks, admissibility being the legal word for whether a person is allowed into the country at all. You prove the first with police certificates and the second with an immigration medical exam. Almost every route to Canada, including Express Entry, asks for both, and both are documents you gather only after you have been invited to apply.
You are looking at moving to Canada and have seen "police certificate" or "medical exam" on a document list without knowing what either involves. This post explains what the checks are, which countries you need paperwork from, when you need it, and how long it stays valid. Weighing New Zealand too? Its version of the same checks is in our post on New Zealand police certificates and medical exams.
A police certificate is an official document from a country's police or government that says whether you have a criminal record there. IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the government department that decides immigration applications) describes it as a statement that shows you do not have a criminal record or, if you do have one, a copy of that record. Countries give it different names (police clearance certificate, certificate of good conduct, criminal record check); IRCC treats them all as police certificates.
IRCC's rule for Express Entry is that you, and each of your family members who is 18 years or older, need a police certificate from every country you stayed in during the last 10 years for 6 months in a row or longer. That includes the country you live in now.
An example: if you lived in India until five years ago, then spent a year studying in the United Kingdom, and now work in the United Arab Emirates, you need certificates from all three. A two-week holiday somewhere does not count, because it is not six months in a row.
"Family members" here means your spouse or partner and your dependent children. The rule applies to them even if they are not coming to Canada with you. Our post on bringing your spouse and children with you covers the rest of what they need.
Express Entry has two stages. First you create a profile and enter a pool of candidates. Then, if you receive an invitation to apply (IRCC calls it an ITA), you submit a full application for permanent residence. IRCC does not ask for police certificates at the profile stage. You include them when you apply for permanent residence after your invitation, and that application has a 60-day deadline from the day you are invited.
Sixty days is not long when a certificate has to come from a country you left years ago, which is why IRCC's page tells you to start requesting certificates once your profile is in the pool. If one has still not arrived by the deadline, the same page says you can provide a letter of explanation with proof that you made your best effort to get it on time. The timing matches proof of funds: declared at the profile stage, documented after the invitation.
IRCC has two different rules, depending on the country.
So do not order the certificate for your current country too early. Time it so that it is still within six months on the day you submit.
In most cases you contact the local police or government of that country and ask for one. Depending on the country, you may need to provide photographs, your fingerprints, your address history and a fee. IRCC publishes country-by-country instructions on that same page: pick the country and it tells you exactly which document to ask for and from whom, which matters because some countries issue several kinds of certificate and IRCC accepts only one.
Two more points from the same page. If the certificate is not in English or French, you send the original with a translation from a certified translator. And giving fingerprints for a police certificate is separate from giving biometrics (fingerprints and a photo) for your immigration application; you will do both.
Everyone who applies for permanent residence must have an immigration medical exam, and so must your family members, even those not coming with you. It is a standard check-up that looks for the conditions Canada's rules treat as a reason to refuse, explained below.
Your own doctor cannot do it. You must see a panel physician: a doctor IRCC has approved to carry out immigration exams. IRCC keeps a searchable list of them by country and city.
The panel physician confirms your identity, asks about your medical history, and does a physical examination (weight, height, hearing, vision, heart, lungs, abdomen, limbs and skin). You may also be sent for a chest X-ray and laboratory tests. Bring your passport, your glasses or contact lenses, any medical reports for a condition you have, and a list of your medication. The panel physician does not decide your application; they send the results to IRCC, which decides.
For Express Entry, IRCC's page states that you must get a medical exam after you receive your invitation to apply, but before you apply. IRCC calls this an upfront medical exam. The panel physician gives you a document confirming that the exam was completed, and you upload that document when you submit your application.
For most other permanent residence applications the order is reversed: you submit first, IRCC sends you instructions on how to get the exam, and you must have it done within 30 days of receiving them. Outside Express Entry, do not book an exam until IRCC tells you to.
Medical exam results are valid for 12 months. If your application is still being processed when that period runs out, you may be asked to do the exam again.
A person is medically inadmissible when IRCC decides that their health condition is one of three things: a danger to public health, a danger to public safety, or an "excessive demand" on health or social services. Excessive demand means that the care the condition needs would cost more than a threshold the government sets, or would make waiting times longer for people already in Canada. The page publishes the current threshold. The excessive-demand part of the rule does not apply to everyone: a sponsored spouse, partner or dependent child, and refugees and protected persons, are exempt from it.
Some records make a person criminally inadmissible. IRCC's page on overcoming criminal convictions says that if you have committed or been convicted of a crime, you may not be allowed into Canada, and its examples are as everyday as impaired driving. There are routes back: being "deemed rehabilitated" once enough time has passed, applying for "individual rehabilitation" at least five years after the end of your sentence, a record suspension for a conviction in Canada, or a temporary resident permit. Which one fits depends on the crime and the dates, and that page is where to start. A record on a police certificate is not automatically a refusal; those routes exist for exactly that situation.
Our questionnaire does not ask about your health or your criminal record. So every Canada route the report assesses assumes you can meet these admissibility checks, which you complete at the application stage, after an invitation or approval. The report does not carry a checklist step for police certificates or the medical exam today.
Police certificates and the medical exam come at the end of the process. The first question is which Canadian route fits you at all, and our Canada page lists the ones we assess. To see how you measure up, take our free questionnaire: a few minutes, a free results summary, and then your choice whether to unlock the full report.
Answer our free questionnaire and see your eligibility summary instantly. You only pay to unlock your full personalized immigration report.