Entering Canada With a DUI: Permits, Rehabilitation, and Costs

Entering Canada with a DUI is possible, but not automatic: a single impaired driving conviction makes you criminally inadmissible under Canadian immigration law, and you generally need to clear that inadmissibility before you travel through deemed rehabilitation, a Criminal Rehabilitation approval, or a Temporary Resident Permit. Which option applies depends mainly on when the offense happened and how long ago you finished your sentence.

Why a DUI Blocks You at the Border

Canadian border officers don’t apply U.S. law to your record. They translate your offense into its closest Canadian equivalent and assess it under Canadian sentencing ranges. For impaired driving, that equivalent is operating a conveyance while impaired under section 320.14 of the Criminal Code.¹ The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act makes a foreign national inadmissible for “serious criminality” if the offense, committed in Canada, would carry a maximum prison term of at least ten years.²

Before December 18, 2018, impaired driving in Canada carried a five-year maximum, which kept it in the lower “criminality” bracket. Bill C-46 doubled the maximum to ten years on indictment.³ That change moved impaired driving into serious criminality. It doesn’t matter whether your DUI was a misdemeanor in your state, whether anyone was hurt, or whether your reading was barely over the limit. What matters is the Canadian maximum, not the sentence you actually served.

Assume the officer can see your record. Canadian border officers have access to U.S. criminal databases, including FBI records, and a DUI conviction or arrest usually appears when your passport is scanned. Expunged records often remain visible as well. Concealing a conviction or lying to an officer can trigger a separate five-year ban for misrepresentation, stacked on top of the inadmissibility already caused by the DUI.

Deemed Rehabilitation for Older Offenses

If your DUI offense was committed before December 18, 2018, the pre-C-46 five-year maximum applies to the equivalency analysis. Your offense sits in ordinary criminality, which opens the door to deemed rehabilitation: an automatic forgiveness that requires no application and no fee.⁴

To qualify, you must meet all of these conditions:

You have only one conviction that would be indictable in Canada.
At least ten years have passed since you finished your entire sentence, meaning all jail time served, all fines paid, all probation completed, and all court-ordered programs finished. The clock starts the day after your last obligation was satisfied, not the day of conviction.
You have not been convicted of any other indictable offense during that ten-year period.

These requirements are set out in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations.⁵ If you meet all the criteria, you are legally admissible without filing anything. Bringing your court records and proof of sentence completion to the border is still a good idea; an officer can question you, and having documentation ready avoids delays or a wrongful denial.

For offenses committed on or after December 18, 2018, deemed rehabilitation is permanently unavailable. Because impaired driving now carries a ten-year maximum in Canada, no amount of time will resolve inadmissibility on its own. You have to apply for Criminal Rehabilitation or a Temporary Resident Permit.

Criminal Rehabilitation: The Permanent Fix

Criminal Rehabilitation is a one-time application that, if approved, permanently removes your inadmissibility. It is the strongest remedy and the only route to fully restored travel privileges for someone with a post-2018 DUI. You cannot apply until at least five years have passed since you completed your entire sentence.⁶ Completing the sentence means every fine paid, every hour of community service done, every day of probation finished.

The application is submitted to a Canadian visa office, not at the border. You file Form IMM 1444 with a supporting package.⁷ Routine files take six months or more, and complex cases run longer.⁸ Approved applicants receive a letter confirming admissibility, which should be carried on every future crossing.

The waiting period is the part that surprises most people. If you got a DUI in 2022 and finished probation in 2024, you cannot apply for Criminal Rehabilitation until 2029, and approval will land some months after that. During those waiting years, a Temporary Resident Permit is the only way in.

Temporary Resident Permits for Individual Trips

A Temporary Resident Permit lets you enter Canada for a specific trip despite your inadmissibility. It does not erase your record or change your status; it grants a temporary exception. TRPs are issued for a set period and can cover single or multiple entries depending on the officer’s discretion.⁹

There are two ways to request one:

At a port of entry. You tell the officer you want TRP consideration when you arrive. The officer weighs whether your reason for entering Canada outweighs the health or safety risk to Canadian society. This is intended for genuine urgency or situations where there was not enough time to go through a visa office. If the officer says no, you are turned around immediately.
Through a visa office before travel. You submit a temporary residence application online through an IRCC secure account and request TRP consideration as part of it. This takes longer, but you get a decision before you reach the border.¹⁰

The processing fee is $246.25 CAD per person.¹¹ The bar for approval at the port of entry is high. Officers want a compelling reason: a business conference, a family funeral, a medical appointment. A vacation rarely clears it. When your timeline allows, applying through a visa office in advance is the safer route.

Arrests, Pending Charges, and Dismissed Cases

A conviction is not required to be turned away. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act makes a foreign national inadmissible for committing an act outside Canada that would constitute an indictable offense if committed in Canada; the word “convicted” does not appear in that section.² In practice, an arrest with pending charges can be treated much like a conviction.

If your charges were dropped or you were acquitted, you should be legally admissible, but the arrest can still surface in the database. Bring court documents proving the outcome. If you completed a diversion program or deferred adjudication, officers may treat the case as unresolved until every condition is satisfied and the case is formally dismissed. Certified copies of the final court order matter here.

Do US Expungements or Pardons Help

Sometimes, but not reliably. Canada evaluates a foreign expungement by asking whether the outcome, under the exact language of the state statute, is equivalent to a Canadian record suspension. Some state expungements translate well: California’s dismissal under Penal Code section 1203.4, for example, has been recognized by the Canadian Consulate as roughly equivalent to a Canadian record suspension. Other state procedures do not translate as cleanly, and the person may still be found inadmissible.

Expunged records also tend to remain visible to Canadian border officers through FBI databases. Even with an expungement, the burden falls on you to prove at the border that your conviction no longer counts under Canadian law. If the officer isn’t convinced, you’re denied entry regardless of what your state court order says. For that reason, many immigration lawyers still recommend pursuing Criminal Rehabilitation. Foreign pardons follow similar logic: Canada does not automatically recognize a U.S. pardon as equivalent to a Canadian record suspension, and you should check with the visa office serving your area before relying on one.¹²

What Happens If You Just Show Up

Trying to enter Canada without addressing your inadmissibility ahead of time is a gamble with real consequences. If the officer determines you are inadmissible and you have no TRP or proof of rehabilitation, you are denied entry and turned back on the spot. If you drove, you drive home. If you flew in, you are escorted back to the terminal and typically have to buy a return flight yourself.

Repeated attempts can escalate. Canadian authorities can issue an exclusion order that formally bars you from Canada for one year. Lying to an officer or omitting your conviction crosses into misrepresentation, which triggers an independent five-year ban that runs on top of your DUI-based inadmissibility. Those are the compounding mistakes that turn a manageable situation into a years-long problem.

What You’ll Spend and How Long It Takes

The real cost and timeline of resolving DUI inadmissibility go well beyond a single application fee.

TRP processing fee: $246.25 CAD per person.¹¹
Criminal Rehabilitation application fee: the amount depends on severity classification. For post-2018 impaired driving, which falls under serious criminality, expect the higher end of the fee scale. Confirm the current figure on the IRCC fee schedule before applying.
FBI Identity History Summary: $18 USD, obtained through the FBI’s fingerprint-based process.¹³
State police certificates from every state you’ve lived in for six months or more since turning eighteen: typically $0 to $37 per state.
Certified court documents: $5 to $40 per document.
Certified translations for any document not in English or French: budget $30 to $100 or more per document, and note that a family member or your immigration representative cannot serve as the translator.

Alongside the FBI report and state and court records, a Criminal Rehabilitation package generally includes a personal statement describing the offense, your blood alcohol concentration, and the changes you’ve made since, plus supporting evidence like program completion certificates, counseling records, and character references. The U.S. applicant guide includes a full checklist on Form IMM 5939.¹⁴

The timeline catches most people off guard. You cannot apply for Criminal Rehabilitation until five years after your sentence is fully completed, and processing then takes at least six months.⁶ For someone sentenced to two years of probation, plan on roughly seven years from conviction before you hold an approval letter. If you need to enter before that five-year mark, a TRP is the only route, and each trip may need its own permit.

1
Department of Justice Canada. Criminal Code RSC 1985 c C-46 – Section 320.14
2
Department of Justice Canada. Immigration and Refugee Protection Act SC 2001 c 27 – Section 36
3
Department of Justice Canada. Legislative Background: Reforms to the Transportation Provisions of the Criminal Code (Bill C-46)
4
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Convicted of Driving While Impaired
5
Department of Justice Canada. Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations SOR/2002-227 – Section 18
6
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Rehabilitation for Persons Who Are Inadmissible to Canada Because of Past Criminal Activity
7
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Application for Criminal Rehabilitation (IMM 1444)
8
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Deemed Rehabilitation
9
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Temporary Resident Permit
10
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. How to Apply for or Request a Temporary Resident Permit
11
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Citizenship and Immigration Application Fees
12
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Overcome Criminal Convictions
13
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Identity History Summary Checks Frequently Asked Questions
14
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Application for Rehabilitation for Persons Who Are Inadmissible to Canada Because of Past Criminal Activity