You will be required to give your temporary or permanent residential address (of a rented apartment, hotel room or your relatives’ address) so that the immigration authorities would be able to mail you your Permanent Residence card. This card is the most important document for an immigrant and allows you to come to Canada as a permanent resident. The Confirmation of Permanent Residence, with which you arrived in Canada for the first time, does not permit you to re-enter Canada. Only Permanent Residence card allows this.

If you are not able to provide the officer with your address, you will be given a form to indicate the address later and to fax it to Immigration Canada. As a rule, a Permanent Residence card is mailed within 30 days after your arrival in Canada.

You will also need a list of all goods and things which will follow you later. Do not forget to divide the list into two parts: Goods delivered, i.e. goods brought with you, and Goods to follow, i.e. goods which will arrive later.

Do not hesitate to ask questions about tax duties and rules of entering Canada. Here is a list of goods which you may bring to Canada duty free:

• Furniture
• Utensils
• Books
• Musical instruments
• Antique
• Collections (stamps, coins, pictures)
• Jewelry (you may use photographs because it is difficult to give full descriptions of jewelry items).

There is a rule that within a year after your first arrival in Canada as a landed immigrant you are entitled to bring to Canada free of duties and taxes those of your personal belongings which you declared upon initial arrival. Note that your suitcases are not checked at your first entry to Canada. But at your following arrivals you may be asked to pay duty for the goods that you bring to Canada.

The next important factor is money. You will be asked about the amount of money at your disposal at the moment of your arrival and the money that will follow, for example, from the proceeds of the sale of your property abroad. This amount will be indicated in your landing document. If you do not mention the money that will follow you, then the amounts transferred from abroad may be taxable as your income.

Note

If no one meets you at the airport, you can take a cab (taxi). There are two services: limo and taxi. As a rule, limo is $20 more expensive, and usually it is a comfortable Cadillac. The prices for trips from the airport to Toronto are usually fixed, the taxis have no meters, so you should better ask about the price before taking a taxi.

Toronto is a big city. Crossings of main streets are called main intersections. If you know your future address you can ask what the closest main intersection is. A taxi driver may not know the location of a street but he will surely know the main intersection.