Your first thirty days as a permanent resident

Clients spend years preparing to land and almost no time preparing for the weeks afterwards. The tasks are not difficult, but several of them depend on each other, so the order matters more than people expect.

Week one

• Apply for your Social Insurance Number. Almost everything else waits on it.
• Open a Canadian bank account, which is easier with the SIN in hand.
• Register for provincial health coverage immediately, because any waiting period starts from registration.
• Confirm the mailing address IRCC holds for your permanent resident card.

Weeks two and three

Get a provincial identification card or begin the driving licence exchange, since some provinces have a limited window in which a foreign licence can be exchanged rather than retested. Register children with a school board. Start building Canadian credit, which is a slow process worth beginning early.

Week four

Turn to credentials. Professional licensing bodies are provincial and slow, and applications often sit for months, so submitting early costs nothing. If your qualification needs assessment for employment rather than immigration, that is usually a separate process from the one you completed for your application.

The thing most people forget

Your residency obligation starts now. Permanent residents must meet a physical presence requirement to keep that status and to renew the card. Clients who spend the first two years travelling for work sometimes discover the problem only when the card expires. Keep records of your time in Canada from the day you land.