Cassels Brock
MONTH-IN-BRIEF (Apr 2024)
Canada Is Now Party to the Apostille Convention—A Welcome Change to Facilitate the Use of Public Documents Abroad
By Michel Gélinas and Jonathan Bilyk, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP
Governments and organizations may require foreign public documents (such as notarized materials or government-issued certificates) to be “authenticated” and then “legalized” before they will accept such documents. Canada’s recent adoption of the Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents (the Convention) simplifies this process for the use of Canadian public documents in other states that are party to the Convention by removing the often time-consuming second step of legalization. A Canadian public document may now be used in a state that is a signatory to the Convention if the document has been authenticated by the relevant Canadian authority. There are more than 125 contracting parties to the Convention, including the United States and United Kingdom (a list of the current parties may be found here).