Roberto1980

Hi there,

Can someone tell me when exchanging your uk licence for a ontario (class G I think ?). Do you have to be residing in canada/in the province for a certain length of time? Or can you swap it as soon as you gain permanent residence.
Thanks

ChrisBan

Unless anyone has further info you can swap straight away. I was only asked for the UK card and paper license when I went to Service Ontario to do exchange and nothing else.

Roberto1980

That's great,

Cheers

Oakvillian

As soon as you arrive, regardless of whether or not you're a permanent resident/citizen/TFW or whatever. Just make sure you take both the plastic card and the paper counterpart with you, plus a recognized form of photo ID (passport should do). Pay the fee, take an eye test, and walk out with a temporary paper licence, which will be replaced in due course (a few weeks) with a photo card.

Bear in mind that it's only for Great Britain (i.e. not Northern Ireland or Channel Islands) licences, only for the 'regular' car class (bike and truck entitlements will not transfer), and only if you've held a full GB licence for a minimum of 2 years.

AtlanticMoose

Just changed mine over two days ago at the test center in Aurora, it's a quick process takes about ten mins. You surrender your two part UK licence, sign some forms and do a super fast eye sight test and pay the fee of 80 dollars then your good to go!

What licence they give you depends on experience. I recieved the full G as I have over two years since I passed my test.

JAJ

It looks like Northern Ireland is acceptable.
Exchange an out-of-province driver's licence | Ontario.ca

Zoe Bell

I think they changed it relatively recently. It never used to be

Oakvillian

I'm happy to be corrected on that one.

I've also updated the wiki page to reflect this.

iaink

Thats very civic minded of you

Roberto1980

Can I confirm that by surrendering your UK licence, do you mean permanently exchanging your documents (paper + photocard licence) and not get them back?
I'm presuming you can still continue to drive in the UK?

Zoe Bell

yeah. if you are visiting then drive on the Canadian one.
if you move back contact DVLA and get UK one back.

it is suggested that you keep a copy of the UK license or at the very least your driver #

Oakvillian

I was catching up on some internal wiki edits for work. I was in a wiki-markup frame of mind

The driver licensing pages are a bit of a mess, really, with some information in the individual provinces' pages and some in the "driving in Canada" page, not all of which are cross-referenced to each other. But I don't have the time (or the inclination, if it comes to that ) to reorganize it all

Roberto1980

Ah, little bit trickier then. So I cant maintain both licences at the same time?
What if I intend to gain a Ontario license on a recce trip prior to permanently moving over (job application requirement to have such)
Although i suppose when I travel back to the uk i can still drive. Tourists do it all the time eh

ChrisBan

If I recall, when I searched this forum at the time I swapped there was an argument that holding two licenses at one time is illegal in Ontario, hence why they send back your UK one, though I'm too lazy to search for that thread

At the end of the day, exchanging the license is easy enough as such as part of your job app surely you can just state this when the question arises and that as soon as you're relocated permanently it'll be one of your first actions

Roberto1980

Aye that's what I thought myself. Cheers