Andrea77

Hi everyone,

After years of waiting I am finally moving to Montreal in May!!! V excited! 

Can anyone who has recently landed in Montreal share their experience about PR activation at Trudeau airport? I am particularly interested in the below questions:

1. Do I need to queue at a specific section?
2. Is the immigration office before or after passport control and collect bags?
3. Can I apply for SIN at the airport?
4. Do I have to apply for health insurance at the airport or do I have to apply in Montreal at a later stage?
5. I will be staying at a B&B for a few weeks initially until I have longer term apt. I guess I simply need to update the address to CIC once I have a new address to receive the PR card?
6. Was the process straight forward?
7. How long did the entire process take?
8. Slightly off topic... but can anyone recommend a good private medical insurance in Montreal? I assume that iot might take a few months to get health card so in the meantime it might be worth looking into private as well


Thank you all in advance for your help!

montreal mike

SIN ... VERY UNLIKELY AT AN AIRPORT ...
HEALTH INSURANCE ... VERY UNLIKELY SINCE MEDICARE IS A PROVINCAL JURISDICTION
PRIVATE INSURANCE ... I ONCE USED BLUE CROSS WHEN I TRAVELED TO THE USA

http://www.qc.croixbleue.ca/index.en.html

Former Lancastrian

1. Im not sure if PET (Montreal) uses residents and non residents lines. If it does use the non resident or just join the normal line. You can't use the ABC machines.
2. The Immigration office is after passport control but you will collect your bags before being sent to Immigration. Tell the officers at Primary (Passport Control) that you will be making a landing.
3. No you will need to visit a Service Canada office.
4. No you will have to apply at an office. CBSA should give you a piece of paper or Welcome package that has these addresses in.
5. If you have friends you can use their address while staying at a B & B. You will have 180 days to inform CIC of your address if you don't supply one on landing.
PR cards are taking around 10 to 14 weeks to be delivered.
6. The whole process is straight forward as long as you have all the necessary documentation.
7. Processing times could be from 15 minutes to 3 hours plus if Immigration is really busy.

angeljaye

Hi Andrea, if you're anything like I was I'm sure you're sooooo excited & I'm sure a little nervous as the date gets closer? We moved to montreal late last year, the weeks are flying by & we've now been here 3 months tomorrow.
My husband flew out earlier to start his new job so I had to make the journey later with 2 kids & a dog, slightly stressful but once I was on the plane all was well. We landed on a Friday at 5pm & I expected Trudeau to be a nightmare but it was fine. I was super organised & had all our docs ready in a folder. There was a small queue at passport control, he asked our reason for visiting & when I said we were moving here he asked me to show our docs which I wasn't expecting at that point. After fumbling around unprepared he was happy and directed me round the corner straight to immigration. You can't miss it, huge canadian sign & lots of glass doors. There were plenty of desks & we had to wait 10 mins till one was available & then it was pretty straight forward. She checked all docs & printed off our TWP's linked to my husbands job. The only thing I would say is check & double check the doc they give you. I was so busy checking the kids, I missed the part where she put me down as a "male" , something I now have the hassle of sorting out :-( once she finished everything she directed me out & round the corner to collect our cases, by which time everyone else had gone & the hall was empty. After that, really easy out to the arrivals. At least you're arriving & it'll be warm, the temperature was a bit of a shock even at the end of October... Today is real feel -30 in Montreal.. Omg Brrrrrrrrr.
Private medical we arranged online with Blue Cross the day before we left to cover 3 months . Sin was done at Canada House & Medical cards also arranged in the city & mine just arrived now I've been here 3months.
Are you travelling alone or moving with family? What area are you planning on staying in? If you're bringing a container let me know, I have a list as long as my arm on extra things I wished I'd brought over from uk.
Feel free to message me with any other questions, I found this site really helpful but didn't come across anyone moving this way :-( x

CFAmovingsoon

Got our SIN at Service Canada at Lester B. Pearson airport in April this year, directly after COPR having been processed.

Zoe Bell

Cool, didn't know there was a service canada centre at the airport (although it kind of makes sense when you think about it)
They don't list it on their website
Service Canada offices in Ontario

I wondered if it was seasonal or something but then I got thinking " when is Immigrant season?"

Sorry , creative avoidance of doing anything productive at work

catpea33

I landed at Trudeau just a few weeks ago. No problems to report!
The visitors to Canada section.

It's after passport control but before bag collection.

Nope.

You have to apply later. The Regie de l'Assurance Maladie office in downtown is at 425 Maisonneuve Boul. W. You won't have instant coverage so you need insurance to cover you for your first 2-3 months. Take your passport, COPR, CSQ, etc.

Yep, that's right.

I thought so. The worst part was the queue - I seemed to have picked a slow queue for passport control so by the time I got to immigration, it seemed like the entire plane was ahead of me. Anyway, got called to the counter, told him I was activating my PR, showed him all my documents and about 5 minutes later I was walking out a PR! After that I collected my bags, went to customs where they checked my Goods to Follow and Goods Accompanying lists and then I was escorted across the corridor to Quebec immigration where they finalised some stuff (not sure what because I thought it had all been done upstairs by immigration). They gave me some info on immigrant schemes, e.g. language lessons, and then I was free to go and meet my friend in arrivals. =)

An hour with the queue. Without the queue (I've never seen it that long before - usually there's only two other people) it would have taken about 20 minutes.

Hopefully someone else can. I got insurance specifically for people who are immigrating before I left.

Good luck!
Cat

CFAmovingsoon

yeah it's immigrant season

It seemed like a pretty definite setup though, with cubicles and desks with photographs of family and the likes... I had looked for their office on the Service Canada website as well, hoping to find a similar mention for Trudeau, but couldn't find it either... It does make a lot of sense though. Saved us a trip to a Service Canada office too and we had sufficient times between flights.