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Notarization: the step that decides whether your document can be apostilled at all

An apostille certifies a signature that the authority already holds on file. Public documents carry one. Private documents, a power of attorney, a declaration, a letter from your doctor, carry nothing an authority can verify, so a notary has to certify them first, and the apostille goes onto that certification. Get the right kind of signature and the file moves. Get the wrong one and it comes back weeks later, unprocessed.

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Does your document need it

The dividing line: who signed it

This is the question that decides your cost and your timeline, and it has nothing to do with how important the document feels.

No notary needed

  • Birth, marriage and death certificates from a provincial registrar, in the format that registrar currently issues
  • Diplomas and transcripts from public universities and colleges (Ontario: issued since January 2019; elsewhere, where the signatory is on file with the authority)
  • Court documents issued by a Canadian court
  • Corporate records issued by a provincial or federal registry
  • RCMP certified criminal record checks
  • Federal documents: citizenship certificates, Health Canada certificates, IRCC documents

Notary required first

  • Powers of attorney, mandates, proxies
  • Affidavits, statutory declarations, sworn statements, single-status declarations
  • Consent-to-travel letters for a child
  • Medical certificates and any letter signed by a physician
  • Certified true copies of passports, identity documents and foreign diplomas
  • Private contracts, company resolutions, shareholder agreements
  • Translations, where the destination requires the translator’s declaration to be notarized
The rule underneath. An apostille never certifies that a document’s contents are true. It certifies that a signature and seal are genuine, by matching them against a specimen the authority holds. A notary exists in this chain to put a verifiable signature onto a document that did not have one.
Who can sign

Not every official signature works, and Québec is its own case

Québec: a notaire, and nothing less

In Québec a notaire is a legal professional who is a member of the Chambre des notaires du Québec. A document received or certified by one can be apostilled, but only after the Chambre issues an authenticity certificate verifying the notaire’s signature: about 20 business days on the standard service, about 72 hours on the urgent one. A document signed before a Québec lawyer goes through the Barreau du Québec instead, in about 5 business days.

A commissioner for oaths is not enough in Québec. The Ministère de la Justice holds no signature specimen for commissioners, so it cannot verify them and refuses the document. This is one of the most common refusals we see, and it usually happens because someone signed at a bank, a municipal office or a CLSC for free and assumed it was equivalent. It is not.

The rest of Canada: a notary public

In Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and the other common-law provinces, a notary public certifies the document and the provincial authority (or Global Affairs Canada) verifies that signature directly. There is no intermediate body, which is why a notarized file outside Québec is a shorter chain.

British Columbia is worth a note: notaries public there are a distinct regulated profession with their own society, alongside lawyers, and both can notarize for apostille purposes. Whoever signs, the B.C. Authentication Program must hold their specimen, which is checked before submission.

The province of the notary decides the authority, not your address. A document you sign before an Ontario notary is an Ontario document and goes to Toronto, even if you live in Calgary and it is headed for Manila.
Doing it remotely

You do not have to be in the country, or in the room

Remote notarization in Québec

Québec notaires can receive acts remotely by videoconference, as technology-based acts, with the signature applied electronically and recorded in the notarial register. We work with partner notaires who accept clients abroad this way. For someone in Dubai, Paris or São Paulo with a Québec matter, this removes the flight.

A paper original is still usually needed

Here is the friction nobody mentions: the authority apostilles a physical document with a verifiable signature, so a remote act generally still produces a paper original that has to reach the authority. We handle that leg. Where a province supports an electronic apostille, the eApostille page covers what is genuinely possible today.

Or use your own notary

If you already have one, keep them. We work with your notary, collect the document after signature and take it from there. We do not require you to use ours, and we do not charge you extra for not doing so.

What it costs

Notary fees are the notary’s, and we do not mark them up

We coordinate notarization; we do not resell it. The notary sets their own fee and bills you directly, or bills us at cost and we pass the exact amount through with the invoice attached. There is no commission, no referral margin and no handling charge on top of a notary’s bill. Our own fee for coordinating is included in the service fee already published on the pricing page.

Fees vary by professional, by province and by what the act involves, which is why we quote the exact figure at pre-check rather than publishing a number here that would be wrong for half the cases. A simple certified true copy and a notarial power of attorney received remotely are not the same piece of work.

What you will also pay, where it applies

  • Chambre des notaires authenticity certificate for any Québec notarial act, at the Chambre’s own rate, standard or urgent
  • Barreau du Québec verification for a document signed before a Québec lawyer
  • The apostille fee itself: $66.50 per document (indexed every january) in Québec, $16 per notarized document, $32 per government-issued, court or public post-secondary document in Ontario, $20 per document in B.C., $25 per document in Alberta, $50 per certificate issued in Saskatchewan, nothing federally
  • Certified translation, if the destination requires one, quoted per page and language pair
Every one of these appears as its own line, at cost, in your written quote before you commit. That is the whole point of the published pricing.
Common questions
Can a notary issue an apostille?
No, anywhere in Canada. A notary certifies a signature or a copy; the apostille is then issued by the designated competent authority, which verifies the notary’s signature against its own records. Any service telling you a notary can apostille your document is describing something that does not exist.
Is a commissioner for oaths the same as a notary?
No, and in Québec the difference decides whether your document can be apostilled at all. The Ministère de la Justice holds no signature specimens for commissioners for oaths, so it refuses documents signed before one. It must be a notaire, whose signature the Chambre des notaires verifies. In common-law provinces the rules differ but the same principle applies: the authority must hold the signatory’s specimen.
How much does notarization cost for an apostille?
It depends on the professional, the province and the act. We coordinate notarization without any markup: the notary bills you directly, or bills us at cost and we pass the exact amount through with the invoice. The figure for your specific document is confirmed in the written pre-check quote before you commit.
Can I get a document notarized remotely from abroad?
In Québec, yes: notaires can receive acts by videoconference as technology-based acts, and we work with partner notaires who accept clients overseas. Elsewhere it depends on the province and on what the receiving country will accept. The pre-check confirms whether your specific document and destination allow it.
Which province’s authority handles a notarized document?
The province of the notary, not your address and not the destination. A document signed before an Ontario notary goes to Official Documents Services in Toronto even if you live in Vancouver. This is the routing error we correct most often.
Do you have to use your notary?
No. If you already have a notary, we work with them, collect the document after signature and handle the rest. We coordinate one only if you want us to, and it costs you nothing extra either way.
Does a translation need to be notarized?
Sometimes. Some destinations accept a certified translator’s declaration on its own; others require that declaration to be notarized, and a few want the translation apostilled as a separate document. It depends entirely on the receiving country, which is why we confirm it per destination. See certified translation.

Send us the document before you book a notary

Half the enquiries we get about notarization turn out not to need one, and some of the other half are about to use the wrong kind of signature. Send scans and the destination country, and we will tell you which it is, free, before anyone charges you anything.

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