Business trips to Canada: what a plain eTA lets you do

For a client meeting, a trade fair or a visit to your subsidiary, a French citizen doesn’t need a business visa for Canada. All you need is an electronic travel authorization (eTA)Source: IRCC, at C$7, if you arrive by air. At the border you enter as a business visitor, a status that lets you stay up to six months.

The eTAElectronic Travel AuthorizationAn online authorization that visa-exempt travellers, including French citizens, must get before boarding a flight to Canada. It costs C$7 on the official site. covers you only if what you’re coming to do doesn’t count as work under Canadian rules. As long as you’re meeting people, negotiating, buying, learning or doing warranty repairs, the eTA is enough. Once you deliver a project paid for by a Canadian client, work the cash register on a stand or build something yourself, you need a work permit or a specific exemption. To decide which side of the line your trip falls on, the border services officer (Canada’s customs and immigration agent) applies three tests when you land.

What counts as a business visitor in Canada?

Someone who comes on business without entering the Canadian labour market. IRCCImmigration, Refugees and Citizenship CanadaThe federal department that handles visas, work and study permits, permanent residence and citizenship. (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the federal immigration department) looks at three indicatorsSource: IRCC, which you should be able to back up with documents:

1. Your pay comes from abroad. Your French employer pays you, not the Canadian company you are meeting.
2. Your main place of business is outside Canada. You have a job, an office and a company in France, and you go back after the trip.
3. The profits stay abroad. What your activity earns goes to your French company, not a Canadian one.

How long you stay doesn’t settle it. A three-day trip can need a permit if you are delivering a service to a Canadian client, while several weeks training a subsidiary’s team is still a business visit. The officer looks mainly at who benefits from your work and who pays you.

What you can do, and what needs a permit

IRCCImmigration, Refugees and Citizenship CanadaThe federal department that handles visas, work and study permits, permanent residence and citizenship.’s list boils down to one rule: you can prepare, sell, learn and repair under warranty, but not produce work for a Canadian client. French companies usually get stuck on the borderline cases, such as commissioning a machine, selling at a stand or running a consulting project.

After-sales service is the exception manufacturers use most, and the one most often misapplied. It covers repair, servicing, set-up, testing and supervision of specialized commercial or industrial equipment bought or leased outside CanadaSource: IRCC. The service contract must be part of the original sale or extend it: a contract negotiated later with a third party doesn’t count. And set-up excludes the hands-on work a construction tradesperson would normally do, unless the equipment needs proprietary know-how.

A short project at a client’s site: the 15- or 30-day exemption

If you really are coming to work, but only for a few days, the Global Skills StrategySource: IRCC, the federal scheme that makes it easier to bring in skilled workers, has an exemption that lets a highly skilled worker work in Canada without a permit for:

• 15 consecutive days, once every 6 months, or
• 30 consecutive days, once every 12 months.

The job must fall under TEERTraining, Education, Experience and ResponsibilitiesThe six categories (0 to 5) of the NOC, which group jobs by the training and experience they require. 0 or 1 of the National Occupational Classification (NOCNational Occupational ClassificationThe Canadian system that sorts every occupation by code and category.), Canada’s job classification: senior managers, engineers, IT professionals, management consultants, professional accountants and so on. Technicians and skilled trades don’t qualify. Researchers at a publicly funded degree-granting institution get a more generous allowance of 120 days a year.

The exemption doesn’t replace the eTAElectronic Travel AuthorizationAn online authorization that visa-exempt travellers, including French citizens, must get before boarding a flight to Canada. It costs C$7 on the official site., and you claim it at the border: tell the officer you’re coming to work under this exemption, with an employer letter describing the job and the dates. Count days carefully, because the rule says consecutive days: a 15-day trip that runs one day over is out.

Three worked examples

These profiles are examples built to illustrate the rules, not real people.

Claire, sales director, at a food trade fair in Montreal

Claire spends four days in Montreal, the big French-speaking city in Quebec, to staff her cookie company’s stand and meet three distributors. Since her company in Nantes pays her and orders will be invoiced from France, she enters as a business visitor with her eTAElectronic Travel AuthorizationAn online authorization that visa-exempt travellers, including French citizens, must get before boarding a flight to Canada. It costs C$7 on the official site.. To show it, she carries an employer letter, her fair registration and her meeting list.

Karim, technician, commissioning a production line

His Lyon employer sold a machine to a plant in Ontario, the province that includes Toronto, with commissioning and a two-year warranty in the contract. Karim comes for three weeks to set up and test it, then train the operators. Because commissioning is written into the contract, this is after-sales service, and Karim travels as a business visitor too, with the sales contract and a letter from the Canadian plant. If he also had to put up the building’s frame, that would be construction work, which needs a permit.

Sophie, consultant, three-week project in Toronto

Her Paris firm bills an audit to a bank in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, and the work is done at the client’s offices. A service delivered on site to a Canadian client is no longer a business visit, but management consulting is a TEERTraining, Education, Experience and ResponsibilitiesThe six categories (0 to 5) of the NOC, which group jobs by the training and experience they require. 1 job, so she can enter under the 30-consecutive-day exemption, provided she hasn’t used it in the past 12 months. A second project in the same year will need a work permit.

What to show at the border

The officer can ask to see any of these, and papers that all tell the same story keep the interview short. Pack them in your carry-on rather than your checked bag.

What about tax, payroll and expenses?

Immigration and tax are separate questions. Even without a work permit, salary paid for days worked in Canada can fall under Canadian withholding rules: the Canada Revenue Agency (CRACanada Revenue AgencyThe federal tax authority, the equivalent of France’s Direction générale des Finances publiques.), the federal tax authority, offers waivers for non-resident employers and for employees protected by a tax treaty, which must be requested in advance. The stakes are small for a few days a year, but once trips become regular, talk to an accountant who knows the France–Canada treaty.

Regular trips can also go further for the company and create a permanent establishment in Canada. And once your services are performed in Canada, sales taxes and withholding may be added to the invoice: check which ones apply to you before you send the first one, using the guide to invoicing a Canadian client from France.

When do you need a work permit?

Anything beyond visitor activities and the short exemptions needs a work permit, and French companies mostly use four routes:

If Canada becomes a regular market, you’ll next have to choose between selling from France, registering your business in a province (each one keeps its own registry) and setting up a Canadian company. The Canada market-entry checklist narrows it down from your answers.