Which Police Certificates Do I Need for Express Entry?

The online system asks for a police certificate for you and for each family member who is 18 or older, from every country where that person stayed for six months in a row or longer during the last ten years. Time spent in Canada is excluded, and so is any time before the person turned 18.

That is what the system asks for automatically. After you apply, an officer can ask for more, from any country at any time in your life since you turned 18. The system's list is the minimum, not the ceiling.

Someone who is 24 today and spent eight months in the United States at 16 is not asked for a US certificate, because the stay was before 18.

Someone who is 45 and worked seven months in Turkey at 25 is not asked for a Turkish certificate, because the stay was more than ten years ago.

Someone who studied in Spain in several four-month blocks, never six months in a row, is not asked by the system. IRCC adds that an officer may still ask later, and that getting the Spanish certificate anyway avoids a delay. When a stay is close to the line, that is the safer reading.

IRCC says plainly that police certificates can take a long time and that you should consider requesting them as soon as your profile is in the pool. An invitation gives you 60 days to file a complete application. Some countries take longer than that to issue a certificate, and a few will only issue one after IRCC sends a request letter. If that applies to you, you upload a statement saying so in the police certificate field, and IRCC sends instructions once the rest of the application is complete.

For the country you live in now, the certificate must be issued no more than six months before the date you submit the application. Order it too early and you may have to order it again.

For any other country, the certificate must be issued after the last time you stayed there for six months in a row. It can be years old, and IRCC will accept one that has passed the expiry date printed on it, as long as it was issued after that last stay and it is not for your current country. IRCC can still ask for an updated one during processing.

Upload a colour scan of the original certificate. IRCC does not accept certified true copies or any other kind of copy, and says an application with one will be rejected. If the certificate is not in English or French, it needs a certified translation like any other document.

You can still submit. In that country's police certificate field you upload a letter of explanation and proof that you made your best effort to get the certificate in time: a confirmation receipt, a payment receipt, a delivery notice, a tracking number, or a note from the issuing agency explaining the delay. An officer reviews it. If they are not satisfied the effort was real, the application can be rejected as incomplete, so keep every receipt from the day you first asked.

A criminal record can make a person inadmissible to Canada, and so can being a risk to its security. The certificate is how IRCC checks. It is not a formality, and a missing or wrong one is one of the simplest ways a complete-looking application gets sent back.

We build a country-by-country list from your travel and work history, including the stays that sit near the six-month line, and check each country's process and lead time before you enter the pool. In our experience, the certificates that cause trouble are the ones nobody thought they needed.