Every other apostille authority in Canada works by mail. Québec closed its public counter, Alberta's front desk no longer takes submissions, British Columbia and Global Affairs Canada never had one. Ontario is the exception. At Official Documents Services (ODS), 777 Bay Street, Lower Level, Toronto, you hand over a complete file and, about half an hour later, you leave with the apostille stapled to your document.
That makes 777 Bay Street the fastest apostille counter in the country, and also the one where people arrive least prepared. Here is what happens there, in the order it happens.
Getting there, and when
ODS is in the lower level of 777 Bay Street, the Ontario government building at Bay and College, a short walk from College subway station. The office is open Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed on statutory holidays.
You do not need an appointment. You may book one on the ministry's online booking page, which gets you a time slot rather than a place in the walk-in line. On a normal morning the published standard wait is about 30 minutes if your documentation is complete; arrive after 3 p.m. with several documents and plan for longer.
Is your document eligible without a notary?
This is the question that sends people back out the door. ODS authenticates the signature of an Ontario official or an Ontario notary public, so the document in your hand must carry one of those signatures. Some Ontario documents qualify as issued:
- Ontario vital statistics certificates: birth, marriage, death and change-of-name certificates from ServiceOntario, in the long form, not laminated.
- Ontario business registry documents issued from 1991 onward.
- Superior Court of Justice and Ontario Court of Justice documents issued from July 10, 2023 onward.
- Ontario public post-secondary degrees, diplomas and transcripts issued from January 1, 2019 onward, carrying the institution's registrar signature and seal.
Everything else, including court documents from before July 10, 2023, private university documents, employment letters, powers of attorney, consent letters and copies of passports, must first be notarized by an Ontario notary public. The notary's signature and seal must both sit entirely on the same page as the certification; if the seal runs onto a second page, the counter will ask you to have it redone.
Two more exclusions catch people: a document signed only by a Commissioner for Taking Affidavits is not accepted (it needs a notary), and foreign-issued documents are not accepted at all unless an Ontario notary witnessed the signature on them. A document in a language other than English or French must be notarized and accompanied by a translation.
The form and the payment
ODS uses one request form, the Authentication Service Request, Ontario form 002-35-5118, available in English and French. You can fill it on paper at the counter, print it at home, or submit the request online through the ministry's document authentication portal, which gives you a service request number you bring to the window with the documents and payment.
The fees, exempt from tax, are:
- $16 per notarized document;
- $32 per Ontario government document, court document or public post-secondary document;
- $32 for filing with a foreign consulate or embassy through ODS.
Fees apply to each document. In person, you can pay by cash, Visa, Mastercard, debit, certified cheque or money order payable to the Minister of Finance. By mail, cheques and money orders must be certified; personal cheques are refused.
At the window
Bring the originals, the form or service request number, your payment, and a photo ID. Documents thicker than a quarter inch (7 mm) must have two holes punched in the upper-left corner so the certificate can be bound to them; the counter can tell you where. Soft copies, printouts of PDFs and photocopies are not authenticated, however good they look.
The clerk checks the signature against the specimen on file, prints the apostille, attaches it to your document and hands it back. The apostille is in English and French and names the Ontario official whose signature it certifies. Do not remove it, ever. An apostille separated from its document is void, and the receiving country will send both back.
By mail, if you are not in Toronto
The same office accepts files by post at Official Documents Services, 777 Bay Street, Lower Level, Toronto ON M7A 2J8, and processes them within 15 business days of receipt. Include the form, the documents, the payment and, if you want a tracking number on the way back, a prepaid return envelope or a computer-generated return waybill. Without one, the documents return by regular mail.
Fifteen business days plus mail both ways is four to five weeks. For a citizenship file, a job start date or a visa appointment, that gap is often the whole problem.
When you cannot be there: the agent route
Ontario does not require the document's owner to appear. Anyone can file at the counter with your completed form and your payment, with no authorization letter. That is how most of our Ontario files are done: our partner agent in the Greater Toronto Area receives your documents, checks them against the refusal list above, files in person at 777 Bay Street and returns the apostilled originals within 48 business hours, with a scan in your inbox the day they come out.
Our fee for that service is $239 for the first document and $109 for each additional one, plus the Ontario fee at cost and shipping. If your document still needs an Ontario notary first, our partner notaries in Toronto handle that step the same day, and you are quoted for it before anything starts. Details and current turnaround on the Toronto apostille page.
Going to a country that wants it translated
Ontario issues the apostille in English and French. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Korea and most of Latin America will then want the document and the certificate translated, usually after the apostille and often by a sworn translator in the destination. The order matters, and getting it wrong means paying twice; we set it out on apostille and certified translation in one order.
Not sure whether your document qualifies at the counter, or whether it belongs in Ontario at all? Send a scan and the destination country to the free pre-check, or message us on WhatsApp, and you will know within the hour.