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Global Affairs of Canada ( former DFAIT) JLAC Division Requirements

Posted by: Edwin Colt | Filed under: Canadian document requirements
Nov 26 2015
English
DFAIT JLAC is the agency in Canada that authenticates Canadian documents at the federal level Global Affairs of Canada -GAC- ( former DFAIT JLAC) is the part of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade that apostille or authenticates Canadian documents for subsequent legalization by foreign Embassies/Consulates in Canada (please note that there are no embassies in Canada for certain countries, and instead the respective embassy in the USA handles both Canada and the USA) or by ministries in actual overseas countries (if accepted by foreign jurisdictions). Global Affairs of Canada also certifies the signatures of foreign consuls who has diplomatic accreditation in Canada.. Generally, they post their requirements on the website - these requirements can be summarized as follows:
  1. They will not apostille or authenticate any religious documents even if they are notarized.
  2. They will not apostille or authenticate documents that have a foreign language in the text (even if it is a side-by-side bilingual text) unless the translation is certified by Canadian translator and notarized by Canadian notary public or commissioner for oaths.
  3. The notary's name, signature, seal and commission details must be conspicuous (i.e., rejection is possible if a notary public forgets to put his/her name next to signature and seal).
  4. Some original documents issued by provincial agencies can be apostilled or authenticated without the need for notarization with very few exceptions.
  5. They prefer that notarization is done more or less recently - we have had cases when the documents were notarized ages ago.
Unlike the US Department of State in Washington, DC, the staff at Global Affairs of Canada (GAC) is often just a couple of persons handling the whole paper load.  Thus, in our opinion it is always best to outsource the authentication task to companies such as Canada Legalization Services© rather than send the documents directly to the GAC and then trying to get in touch with someone there to find out the status of the processing request.
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