Moving to Paraguay from Canada

Step 1

The documents a Canadian assembles

Paraguay's Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (DNM) expects a specific, modest set of documents. As a Canadian you gather these at home, before you fly:

• A Canadian passport valid well beyond your planned travel — check the expiry date now, not at the airport.
• Your Canadian birth certificate — a certified long-form copy from the vital statistics office of the province where you were born. A hospital-issued notice of birth is not accepted.
• An RCMP certified criminal record check — the fingerprint-based federal check, not the name-only local police check. A certified check verifies your identity through fingerprints, so you will be fingerprinted at an RCMP-accredited agency, which digitizes and submits them. This is the police record Paraguay expects from Canadians.
• Your marriage certificate, if you are married and applying as a couple — the provincial certificate from where you married.
• Every one of these documents must then be apostilled — see Step 2 — and later translated into Spanish by a sworn translator in Paraguay.

Step 2

Apostilles — and why this is new for Canada

Until recently Canada was not in the Hague Apostille Convention, and Canadian documents had to go through a slow chain of authentication and consular legalization. That changed: the Apostille Convention entered into force for Canada on 11 January 2024. Canadian documents are now apostilled, and Paraguay accepts the apostille — but Canada, like the US, has no single apostille office, and which authority handles each document depends on where it was issued.

• Federal documents — your RCMP certified criminal record check — are apostilled by Global Affairs Canada.
• Provincial documents — birth and marriage certificates — are apostilled by the designated competent authority of the issuing province. Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Québec each have their own provincial authority; for documents from the remaining provinces and territories, Global Affairs Canada issues the apostille.
• Send a provincial document to the wrong authority and it comes back unprocessed — weeks lost. Confirm the correct office for each document before mailing anything, and note that some documents need notarization first while others do not.
• Sworn translation into Spanish happens after apostille, by a traductor público matriculado registered with Paraguay's courts. It is done in Paraguay, and getting it right the first time matters.

Be honest with yourself

Leaving Canada is a tax event — plan the exit

This is the section most relocation marketing quietly skips. The good news for Canadians: unlike the United States, Canada taxes on residence, not citizenship — so once you genuinely cease to be a Canadian tax resident, your Canadian tax obligation on worldwide income ends. The catch is that ceasing residency is something you have to do properly, and it is not free. You stop being a Canadian tax resident when you sever significant residential ties — your home, and the location of a spouse and dependants — and establish a real home elsewhere; simply buying a plane ticket is not enough. The year you emigrate, Canada applies a departure tax: you are deemed to have disposed of most of your property at fair market value and immediately reacquired it, so unrealized capital gains can be taxed in your final return even though you sold nothing. Some property is excluded, and you can elect to defer payment on the deemed-disposition gain. The honest summary: Paraguay can genuinely lower your cost of living and give you a stable second residency, and a clean break from Canadian tax residency is achievable — but the departure-tax bill and the ties test are real. Speak to a Canadian cross-border accountant before you make any tax-driven decision or sell any asset.

Getting there

Flights, timeline, and your first weeks

A realistic picture of the move itself:

• There are no direct flights from Canada to Asunción. Routings connect through hubs such as the United States, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Lima or Panama City — budget a full travel day each way, often more.
• Document preparation — ordering records, fingerprinting, federal and provincial apostilles, courier time — typically runs several weeks to a few months from Canada, paced by your slowest apostille office. Confirm current processing times before you commit to dates.
• You do not currently need a visa to enter Paraguay as a Canadian tourist — Canada is covered by a visa waiver for tourism and business. Note this waiver is a renewable arrangement rather than permanent (most recently extended to 2027), so check it is still in force close to travel. You begin the residency process in person, after you arrive, at the DNM.
• The visa waiver does not permit work, and it is not residency — it is simply how you enter to start the process.

FAQ

Moving to Paraguay from Canada — FAQ