Indians in Canada: the 2026 guide to PR and study permits, health cards, rent, tax, citizenship, temples and Diwali

The 2021 census counted 1,347,715 people who reported “Indian (India)” as an ethnic or cultural origin in Canada — 3.7% of the 36.3 million people Statistics Canada counted in private households. Nearly six in ten of them live in two metropolitan areas, Toronto (578,095) and Vancouver (213,795), and the cities where the share is highest are suburbs of those two: Brampton, where 27.7% of residents gave that origin, and Surrey, where about one in five did. They are not one community. The census counts 763,785 people with Punjabi as a mother tongue, 224,415 with Hindi and 184,750 with Tamil, and among people of Indian origin the two largest religious groups are Hindu (444,995) and Sikh (424,865).

The other half of the picture is movement, and in 2026 it has turned. Canada admitted 98,830 Indian citizens as permanent residents in 2025, a quarter of everyone it admitted, against 139,790 in 2023; and the number of Indians whose study permit took effect in the year fell from 277,940 in 2023 to 93,685 in 2025. The 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan holds permanent-resident admissions at 380,000 a year and cuts new temporary arrivals to 385,000 in 2026, and the 2026 study-permit cap is 408,000, of which only 155,000 are new arrivals. So this guide says plainly what the older guides did not have to: the door is open, the community you arrive into is large and settled, and the way in is narrower, slower and costlier than it was in 2022. Every dollar figure below is in Canadian dollars; the Bank of Canada’s rate for 16 October 2026 was about ₹67 to the dollar.

The pages that go deeper are on this site: jobs and permits, the cost of living for a family and a student, sending money to India, the OCI card, renewing an Indian passport, what to take to India and the temples and gurdwaras directory. Seven cities have a guide of their own — Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Vancouver and Surrey, Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal — and this page summarises each of them rather than repeating it.

The census count

About 1.35 million people who reported “Indian (India)” as an ethnic or cultural origin live in Canada: 1,347,715 in the 2021 census. It counts everyone who reported “Indian (India)” as an origin, alone or alongside another. People who reported only a regional origin, such as Punjabi, Gujarati or Tamil, are counted separately and are not in this figure. That is the number this site quotes for Canada, from Statistics Canada’s table 98-10-0356-01, and it is a floor, not a ceiling: the census has its own lines for 279,950 people with a Punjabi origin, 102,170 with a Tamil origin and 36,970 with a Gujarati origin (total responses), many of whom also reported “Indian (India)”, so the lines overlap and cannot be added to the headline. That is why the headline reads low exactly where Punjabi, Gujarati and Tamil communities are strongest.

India’s count

India’s Ministry of External Affairs publishes a table of overseas Indians, and its entry for Canada, dated January 2026, reads 3,247,980: 1,859,680 persons of Indian origin and 1,388,300 non-resident Indians. It counts Indian citizens living abroad and foreign citizens of Indian origin, and it does not publish how either is estimated. It is the Indian government’s own accounting, not a census: it is more than twice the census count of Indian (India) origin and larger than the whole South Asian group the census counted, and its figure for non-resident Indians moves with the date — an older table lower on the same page gives 1,016,274, and its July 2026 bilateral brief with Canada speaks of more than 1.8 million Indo-Canadians and an estimated 1 million non-resident Indians, plus an estimated 392,810 Indian students in Canada at the end of 2024. Quote the census for a count of the community, and the ministry for how India counts its diaspora.

Religion among people of Indian origin

The census cross-tabulates religion with origin, and the split for people who reported “Indian (India)” is close to a third Hindu, a third Sikh and a third everyone else:

The provinces differ sharply, and the where-Indians-live section has the figures: Sikhs are the larger group in British Columbia and Manitoba, Hindus in Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan, and Alberta is split between them.

Languages

Punjabi is the largest Indian language in Canada by a wide margin, ahead of Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati. These are mother-tongue counts for 2021, single and multiple responses together (Statistics Canada, table 98-10-0181-01):

Read the table as languages, not as Indian nationals: Urdu, Bengali and Tamil are also the languages of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan Canadians, who share many of the same neighbourhoods, grocers and streets, and each city guide has a section on those neighbours.

A short history

Indians reached Canada’s west coast in small numbers at the end of the 19th century. Sikh soldiers returning from Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee passed through British Columbia in 1897, a first large party arrived in 1904, and Punjabi men — many from the Doaba districts around Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar — worked in the lumber mills along the Fraser River. By 1908 British Columbia counted 5,179 South Asian residents. The welcome was hostile. An order in council of 8 January 1908 required immigrants to arrive on a continuous journey from their country of origin, for which no ship route from India then existed, and British Columbia took the provincial vote from South Asian men, which also cost them the federal vote because Ottawa then relied on provincial voters’ lists. By 1921 the province’s South Asian population had fallen to 951.

In 1914 the Komagata Maru reached Burrard Inlet on 23 May with 376 passengers from British India — 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims and 12 Hindus — and, after two months at anchor, left on 23 July with all but about two dozen of them refused entry. The British Columbia legislature apologised on 23 May 2008 and the Prime Minister apologised in the House of Commons on 18 May 2016; the Ross Street Gurdwara in Vancouver keeps a museum about the ship, and a monument stands in Coal Harbour. British Columbia restored the vote to South Asians in 1947, the year the continuous-journey rule was dropped, and by 1967 Canada had scrapped immigration quotas based on specific ethnic groups. The South Asian population then grew from about 7,000 in 1961 to about 67,900 in 1971 (the figures Wikipedia’s India–Canada page gives), and the first Indian shops on Gerrard Street East in Toronto opened in the early 1970s. Almost everything else in this guide happened in the last thirty years: the skilled-worker and family flows of the 1990s and 2000s, the suburban settlement of Brampton, Surrey and Mississauga, and from the 2010s the students who, by 2022, made up two in five of all study-permit holders in the country.

What IRCC’s own figures show

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) publishes two open-data series that count Indians by citizenship: permanent residents admitted, and study permit holders. Both are dated 31 August 2026, preliminary and rounded to the nearest five, and the 2026 rows are January to August only. Permanent residents are counted as people admitted in the year, including those who were already in Canada on a work or study permit — so the table counts transitions, not flights from Delhi.

Indian admissions fell 29% between 2023 and 2025, and in the first eight months of 2026 they are running 19% below the same months of 2025 (61,435 against 76,175, our sum of IRCC’s monthly figures) while admissions from all countries are down 5%. The study-permit series shows the larger fall. It counts people whose permit took effect in the calendar year, new permits and extensions together, so it is a count of Indian students on the books and not of arrivals:

Between 2023 and 2025 the Indian figure fell by two-thirds. Three things sit behind it, all national policy. IRCC capped study permits — a target of 485,000 for 2024, 437,000 for 2025 and 408,000 for 2026, of which 155,000 are for new arrivals and 253,000 for extensions — and gave each province an allocation of attestation letters (Ontario 104,780, British Columbia 32,596, Alberta 32,271, Quebec 93,069, Manitoba 11,196, Saskatchewan 11,349), with master’s and doctoral students at public institutions exempt from the letter from 1 January 2026. It refused more Indian applications: 74% in August 2025 against 32% in August 2023, according to a review published by Drishti IAS on 6 October 2026. And it cut the plan, from 395,000 permanent residents in 2025 to 380,000 a year for 2026 to 2028, with new temporary arrivals down from 673,650 in 2025 to 385,000 in 2026. The 2027–2029 plan is due to be tabled by 1 November 2026; we found no published plan on 23 October. Read the jobs guide for what this means for a job search and the students section of the cost-of-living guide for what a student year costs.

Indian Canada is concentrated in a handful of places and is mostly suburban. These are the 2021 census counts of people who reported “Indian (India)” as an ethnic or cultural origin, with the Hindu and Sikh counts among them and the number of immigrants born in India (Statistics Canada, tables 98-10-0356, 98-10-0341 and 98-10-0302):

New Brunswick has 5,655 people of Indian origin, Newfoundland and Labrador 2,765, Prince Edward Island 2,280 and the three territories 1,230 between them. Ontario holds 57% of the national count and British Columbia 20%. In British Columbia 59% of people of Indian origin are Sikh, in Manitoba half, while in Ontario 38% are Hindu, in Saskatchewan 44% and in Quebec 35%.

Toronto alone holds 43% of Canada’s Indian-origin count and Toronto and Vancouver together 59%. Abbotsford–Mission has the highest share of any metropolitan area (14.3%), and Brampton, Surrey and Mississauga are not areas of their own but cities inside the Toronto and Vancouver metros: Brampton 180,300 (27.7% of residents), Surrey 117,765 and Mississauga 90,560 (12.7%), against 182,115 in the City of Toronto, 27,765 in the City of Vancouver, 71,115 in the City of Calgary, 61,940 in the City of Edmonton and 36,920 in the City of Montréal.

The seven cities with their own guide

• Toronto. Indian Toronto is in Scarborough, Etobicoke and Rexdale, North York and Thorncliffe Park rather than downtown, and in the 905 beyond them; Gerrard India Bazaar in the east end, where the first shops opened in the early 1970s, is where people shop and eat. OHIP has no waiting period.
• Brampton. The city is 52% South Asian, across the whole city rather than one district; the Hindu Sabha Mandir at 9225 The Gore Road and its many gurdwaras are the anchors; every landlord renting one to four units needs a City licence since 1 January 2026; all fireworks are banned, Diwali included.
• Mississauga. Malton beside Pearson airport is the long-settled neighbourhood, Meadowvale, Churchill Meadows and Erin Mills the family suburbs; the Ontario Khalsa Darbar at 7080 Dixie Road is the anchor; the City allows consumer fireworks at home on Diwali, on private property, with limits.
• Vancouver and Surrey. More than half the metro’s Indian-origin population lives in Surrey (Newton, Fleetwood, Strawberry Hill); the Punjabi Market on Main Street between 48th and 51st avenues is the historic shopping street and the Ross Street Gurdwara the oldest institution; MSP health cover starts after a wait.
• Calgary. The north-east — Saddle Ridge, Taradale, Martindale, Falconridge, Castleridge — on the Blue Line to Saddletowne, with Chestermere and Airdrie beyond; rents are uncapped but asking rents have fallen; personal fireworks are not permitted.
• Edmonton. Mill Woods and the Meadows on the south-east side, on the Valley Line, with newer families in Ellerslie, Windermere and Sherwood Park; fireworks need a City permit that only certified professionals hold.
• Montreal. Parc-Extension around Jean-Talon West, Côte-des-Neiges, Saint-Laurent, LaSalle and Dollard-des-Ormeaux; Quebec runs its own immigration, French is the language of services and schools, and RAMQ health cover starts after a wait of up to three months.

The same logic holds in the places without a guide of their own — Winnipeg, Ottawa, Kitchener–Waterloo, Hamilton, Abbotsford, Halifax and Victoria. The closer a street is to a temple or gurdwara and a transit stop, the more Indian it is, and the temples and gurdwaras directory lists the places of worship in each of them. The groups on this site, at /groups/in/canada, are the quickest way to find out which neighbourhood a person from your home town chose.

Canada has no job-seeker visa, and in 2026 no round of Express Entry open to everyone: a person comes as a permanent resident through a category round or a provincial nomination, as a student, or as a worker on a permit. The jobs guide takes each door in full, with the fees and the scams; this section is the map, as the rules stood on 23 October 2026.

Express Entry: the October 2026 rounds

IRCC publishes every round. The most recent ones when we read the table on 23 October were these (the lowest score invited, out of 1,200):

From India, without Canadian experience, the open doors in that table are the healthcare, trades and French rounds; the Canadian Experience Class needs a year of skilled work in Canada first. The one-time pathway that IRCC announced for up to 33,000 temporary workers to become permanent residents in 2026 and 2027 is aimed at people already here.

Study, the PGWP and spouses

A master’s degree at a public university is the form of study that has held up most firmly under the caps: no attestation letter, a PGWP without a field-of-study list, and a spouse who can qualify for an open work permit. The students section of the jobs guide explains what is left of the route for a diploma at a college, and warns about the agents in India who promise a place. Two rules catch families: a permit is never issued past the expiry of the passport, so an Indian passport with a short validity shortens everything built on it (renew early), and a student works at most 24 hours a week off campus in term time.

Parents and grandparents

The Parents and Grandparents Program, which sponsors a parent for permanent residence, was reported paused by Moving2Canada on 15 July 2026, with no new invitations and no date to reopen; applications already in the queue are being processed. The super visa is a separate, temporary route: a parent may stay up to five years at a time on a visa valid for up to ten years, with at least $100,000 of private emergency medical cover and a host whose income meets the table for the family’s size. The cost-of-living guide has the premiums and the income table.

Quebec chooses its own

Quebec selects its own economic immigrants, and French is the condition of most of it. Its 2026 plan admits 45,000 permanent residents; the Quebec Experience Program reopened on 2 July 2026 with spoken French at level 7; and the Parti Québécois government elected on 5 October 2026 campaigned on cutting admissions to 35,000. The Montreal guide sets out what that means.

The labour market you arrive into

Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey for September 2026, released on 9 October, put unemployment at 6.5% after a fall of 68,000 jobs in the month, youth unemployment at 13.0%, and average hourly wages at $37.64, up 2.3% in a year. By province, unemployment was 7.0% in Ontario, 6.4% in British Columbia and Alberta, and 6.0% in Quebec. It is a market where an experienced nurse, tradesperson or doctor can still be hired from abroad and a graduate with no experience mostly cannot, and nobody can sell you a job offer; the jobs guide has the details and the scams section names the ones aimed at people in India.

The order matters, because each step needs the one before it. The national version is here; each city guide has its own (Toronto’s, for example, is written for Ontario’s rules, and Vancouver’s for British Columbia’s).

1. Before you fly. A worker or student receives a letter of introduction, not the permit itself: the permit is printed at the airport, and the officer’s counter is the place to check the employer’s name, the occupation, the location and the expiry. A permanent resident carries the confirmation of permanent residence. If you are going to British Columbia or Quebec, buy private health insurance for the waiting period before you board, and book a few nights of short-term accommodation rather than signing a lease from India.
2. The Social Insurance Number. Service Canada issues it free, online or at one of its offices; your employer needs it within days of your start. A temporary resident’s SIN begins with 9 and expires with the permit. Anyone selling a SIN, or “SIN activation”, is a fraud.
3. A health card, the same week. Provincial cover starts on different days in different provinces (see the health section), and the card does not arrive until you apply. Register for a family doctor through the province’s waiting list at the same time; the shortage of family doctors is real everywhere.
4. A bank account. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada says a bank can open an account on original identity documents — two documents that between them show your name, address and date of birth, a foreign passport among them — or on one document plus a customer in good standing who confirms who you are, and that a newcomer may be able to open an account with proper ID. The big banks sell newcomer packages, several open an account from India before you fly, and the digital banks open one from a phone; compare them before you take the first offer at the airport. Start a credit history at once — a secured credit card if need be — because a landlord and a car lease will ask for it.
5. A phone. The three national networks and their cheaper sister brands sell prepaid and monthly plans; the cost-of-living guide has the October 2026 prices. Keep your Indian number alive for your bank’s one-time passwords and for WhatsApp.
6. A driving licence. Each province sets its own rule, and India has no exchange agreement with any of them. Ontario lets you drive on an Indian licence for 60 days after you move, and from 1 July 2026 gives credit for up to a year of experience on an authentication letter from the Indian licensing authority; British Columbia’s ICBC allows 90 days. After that you sit the knowledge and road tests, and if you cannot show more than two years of experience you enter graduated licensing.
7. Children’s school and the family’s benefits. Register at the local school for your address. Apply for the Canada Child Benefit (form RC66) and for the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, which CRA says replaces the GST/HST credit, as soon as you have a SIN; a family on work permits starts receiving the child benefit only in the nineteenth month of residence.
8. Winter clothes before November. A family of four spends about $1,000 to $1,500 on coats, boots and snowsuits in the first year (our estimate; the sales and Costco are cheaper).
9. Your people. Go to one temple, gurdwara or association event in the first fortnight, and join the groups before you land: /groups/in/canada. Settlement agencies in every city give newcomers free help with résumés, English and paperwork; nobody should be paid for that.

Things that cost newcomers later

• Paying a deposit for a flat you have not seen, or wiring money to a “landlord abroad”. It is the commonest rental scam in every Indian group in Canada, aimed above all at students.
• Buying an LMIA or a “job letter”. Illegal, and the buyer is the one who loses the permit; see the jobs guide.
• Hiring an immigration “consultant” who is not on the register. Only a licensed consultant, a lawyer or paralegal, or a Quebec notary may charge for immigration advice, and the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants keeps a public register.
• Letting the Indian passport run down. IRCC will not issue a permit beyond the passport’s expiry, and a passport renewal from Canada takes weeks to months; the passport guide has the timings.

Almost every newcomer rents, and the rules that govern a first lease are provincial, so the same family signs different contracts in Brampton, Surrey, Calgary and Montréal. This section sets the rents beside the rules and sends you to the city guides for the neighbourhoods; every city guide has a renting section with the local detail.

What rent costs

Zumper’s city pages, opened on 23 October 2026 (updated 22 October), give average asking rents on new listings, and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) publishes the average rent of purpose-built apartments, sitting tenants included, from its October 2025 survey. The gap between the two is the number newcomers feel: a new tenant pays the asking rent, not the average.

Asking rents in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Montréal are lower than a year ago on Zumper’s figures, by between 1% and 11%, which gives a newcomer more room to bargain than in 2023. The city guides carry figures read on 17 to 22 October and can differ from these by a few dollars.

The rules, province by province

A landlord cannot lawfully demand more up front than the table allows, but a newcomer with no Canadian credit history may offer more — several months in advance, a co-signer with Canadian income, a job offer letter, the last pay slips — and in a falling market a landlord is readier to say yes than in 2023. Read the lease on the province’s standard form where there is one, never pay before you have seen the unit, and never wire money to a landlord abroad.

Basement apartments

In Brampton, Mississauga and Scarborough a large share of the rentals Indian families and students take are basement units in family houses, at roughly $1,400 to $1,700 for a one-bedroom and $1,700 to $2,000 for a two-bedroom in October 2026 (the cost-of-living guide’s estimate), often with utilities split. They are cheaper for a reason — low ceilings, small windows, shared laundry and, in an unregistered unit, no guarantee that the fire separation and second exit are real. Brampton and Mississauga register second units and Brampton has required a licence for every landlord renting one to four units since 1 January 2026, so ask to see the registration; an unregistered unit can be closed by the city, leaving you with nowhere to live and a deposit to chase.

Buying

Citizens and permanent residents are not caught by the federal ban on foreign buyers, which was extended in February 2024 to 1 January 2027; we found no later change on 23 October, so read the current text before you act. A work-permit holder is exempt if the permit has at least 183 days left on the day of purchase and the buyer has not bought more than one residential property, and the provinces add their own taxes on foreign buyers. A first-time buyer who is a resident can use the First Home Savings Account described in the tax section. Buying in India while you rent in Canada is a different question, answered in the send-money guide.

When you become a taxpayer, and what you file

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) treats most newcomers as residents for income tax from the first day they live in Canada. Income earned outside Canada before that is not taxable here, though a family reports its earlier income on a statement for the child benefit, and from then on Canada taxes residents on their income from everywhere. You file a return for the calendar year by 30 April of the following year (15 June if you or your spouse is self-employed), and you do not file for the year of arrival until the year after. Income tax, the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Employment Insurance (EI) are deducted at source from a salary, and a return usually gets some of it back.

For 2026 the federal rates are 14% up to $58,523, 20.5% to $117,045, 26% to $181,440, 29% to $258,482 and 33% above, with a basic personal amount of $16,452; each province adds its own rates. CPP is 5.95% on earnings between $3,500 and $74,600 and EI 1.63% up to $68,900. On our calculations for a single employee with the basic credits only, a $70,000 salary leaves about $4,482 a month in Ontario, $100,000 about $6,184 and $150,000 about $8,693 (Alberta and British Columbia are within a few dollars of each other and slightly higher); the cost-of-living guide has the working.

The three accounts every newcomer is asked about

• TFSA (tax-free savings account). The 2026 dollar limit is $7,000. A resident aged 18 or over starts to accumulate room on the day residency begins; CRA’s own example gives a newcomer that year’s limit. Growth and withdrawals are tax-free, which suits an emergency fund and money for the trip home.
• RRSP (registered retirement savings plan). You may deduct contributions up to 18% of last year’s earned income, to a dollar limit of $33,810 for 2026 ($35,390 for 2027), and pay tax when you withdraw. Many employers match contributions to a group RRSP, which is the first thing to ask about in an offer.
• FHSA (first home savings account). You may put in $8,000 a year up to $40,000, deduct the contributions and withdraw tax-free to buy a first home. You must be 18 or over, a resident of Canada and a first-time buyer, and CRA’s test looks back through the current year and the four before: if you or your spouse owned and lived in a home in that time, you cannot open one, and CRA’s definitions page says a home outside Canada that would have counted had it been in Canada also counts against you — so a flat you owned and lived in in India within the window can rule you out.

The India–Canada tax treaty

The Canada–India convention, signed in Delhi on 11 January 1996 and in force since 6 May 1997, settles who taxes what when both countries claim a person. If you are resident in both, residence goes first to the country where you have a permanent home, then to where your personal and economic ties are closer, then to your habitual abode, then to nationality. India’s tax on interest paid to a Canadian resident is capped at 15%, on dividends at 15% for a company holding at least 10% of the payer and 25% in other cases, and Canada gives a deduction from its tax for tax paid in India on Indian-source income. In practice that is why a bank in India that deducts 31.2% at source on NRO interest should deduct 15% if you give it a Canadian tax residency certificate and Form 10F; the send-money guide works through it.

Your Indian accounts and property, and the form people miss

Keep your Indian accounts and convert them to NRE (money from abroad, interest exempt in India while you are non-resident) and NRO (money earned in India, interest taxed in India) accounts; Canada taxes the interest on both, with a credit for Indian tax only up to the treaty rate. If the total cost of your foreign property — those deposits, Indian shares and mutual funds, a flat you rent out — exceeded $100,000 at any time in the year, you must file Form T1135 with your return; a holiday home you use yourself is excluded. If you later leave Canada for good, CRA treats most of your property as sold at market value on the day you go, with an exemption for people resident in Canada for 60 months or less in the previous ten years; the OCI guide covers that and the Indian side. A worker posted to Canada by an Indian employer can stay in India’s EPF instead of paying CPP under the social security agreement between the two countries, which has been in force since 2015; ask payroll which regime you are in before the first payslip.

The cost-of-living guide works out the budgets in full from rents, fares, daycare fees and shelf prices read in October 2026, and its summary is below. The family is two parents, a three-year-old in licensed daycare and an eight-year-old at school, vegetarian, cooking at home, renting a two-bedroom flat, with one car and nothing saved. Every figure is an estimate, in Canadian dollars, with rupees at ₹67 to the dollar.

Rent is about a third of every budget. The cost-of-living guide’s most useful sentence is that one average salary — about $70,000 a year at an average hourly wage of $37.64 — does not carry a family of four in any of the three cities, and two average salaries carry it comfortably in all of them. The Canada Child Benefit changes the sum for a family that qualifies (from July 2026 to June 2027 the maximum is $8,157 a year for a child under six and $6,883 for a child of six to seventeen), but a family on work permits waits until the nineteenth month of residence.

Where an Indian family shops

Groceries are the line where an Indian family does better than the Canadian average, because dal, rice, atta and vegetables cooked at home are cheap even at Canadian prices. The guide puts a vegetarian family of four at about $780 a month for staples and $1,000 to $1,100 once the Costco run, frozen parathas, children’s lunches and the sweet-shop box are counted. Walmart stocks the main Indian brands of rice, atta and dal, Chalo FreshCo and the independent Indian grocers sell the same staples and fresh vegetables at lower prices, and the three habits that cut the bill are buying in the big bags once a month, buying vegetables at Indian, Chinese or Middle Eastern grocers rather than the supermarket, and watching the weekly flyers. Eating out is the leak: a thali or biryani for four with tax and tip is $70 to $100, and twice a week is $700 a month.

The Indian businesses directory for Canada lists the grocers, sweet shops, restaurants and tiffin services by city, with reviews from members, and the city guides name the plazas and streets where they cluster, which differ by city: Gerrard India Bazaar in Toronto, the Punjabi Market on Main Street in Vancouver, the plazas of Brampton, Mississauga and Calgary’s north-east. What you may bring back from India in a suitcase — spices and pickles yes, ghee, paneer and milk sweets no — is in the what to take to India guide.

Canada’s hospitals and doctors are free at the point of use once you hold a provincial health card, and each province runs its own plan, so the card, the rules and the start date change at the border. The waiting period is the part that surprises people from India, and it differs by province:

In British Columbia and Quebec buy private cover before you land and keep it until the card is active: most private plans exclude pre-existing conditions, pregnancy included, and an uninsured hospital stay is billed in full. Quebec tells temporary workers to buy cover by the fifth day after arrival. In every province register in the first week, because the waiting period runs from arrival but the card does not arrive until you apply.

What the card does not pay for

Adults’ provincial plans do not cover dental care, glasses and contact lenses, physiotherapy outside hospital or most prescription medicines; an employer’s group plan usually pays 80% to 100% of those, and without one a check-up and clean is $250 to $400 and a pair of glasses $250 to $500 (estimates). The federal Canadian Dental Care Plan covers residents with no dental insurance and family income under $90,000, but it needs a Canadian tax return for the previous year, so a family in its first year usually is not yet eligible.

A family doctor, and 811

Family doctors are the bottleneck in every province. Each has a registry — Health Care Connect in Ontario, the Health Connect Registry in British Columbia — that you join with your health card number, and each runs a nurse line on 811 at any hour. Walk-in clinics see patients without a regular doctor, and in the Indian neighbourhoods it is common to find a doctor who speaks Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu or Tamil: ask in the groups. For anything life-threatening, call 911. The city guides’ health sections name the hospitals near each Indian neighbourhood.

Parents on a visit or a super visa

No provincial plan covers a visiting parent. The super visa requires private medical insurance from a Canadian insurer, or an authorised foreign one, with at least $100,000 of emergency cover for a year; the cost-of-living guide’s broker illustrations for 2026 are about $1,241 a year at 60, $1,588 at 65, $2,187 at 70 and $2,713 at 75, with a $1,000 deductible and no cover for pre-existing conditions. A policy that actually pays matters more than one that is cheap.

Schools

Public schools are free from kindergarten to Grade 12 for the children of citizens, permanent residents and most work-permit holders, and each province runs its own system, so the school your child is entitled to depends on your address and on the board. Ontario has public and publicly funded Catholic boards in English and in French, and full-day kindergarten from age four; a Hindu, Sikh or Muslim family can use the public board without any religious test. In Quebec the children of immigrants attend French-language public schools by default. Families on a study permit should ask the board’s welcome centre, because the rules for a student’s children vary by province and by the parent’s programme. Budget for what is not free: trips, supplies, lunch, and the before- and after-school care that costs $400 to $600 a month in Ontario. Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali are taught at weekends through the boards’ language programmes and through temples, gurdwaras and community schools; the Toronto guide has the dates for French Immersion applications and the local classes.

Childcare: the $10-a-day promise, province by province

The federal agreements of 2021 promised an average of $10 a day for licensed care for under-sixes by March 2026. By the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ survey of 35 cities, published on 19 August 2026, five jurisdictions had reached $10 a day as a set or maximum fee — Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nunavut — and Quebec’s $9.65 a day predates the agreements. The rest had not:

The catch is the waitlist: cheaper care raised demand faster than places, and infant care is hard to find at any fee. Put the child’s name on every list — each centre’s and the city’s or province’s central one — the week you have an address, and plan for a home daycare or a grandparent on a super visa in between.

The Canada Child Benefit

The Canada Child Benefit is a tax-free monthly payment that offsets most of a family’s childcare bill: from July 2026 to June 2027 the maximum is $8,157 a year for a child under six ($679.75 a month) and $6,883 for a child of six to seventeen ($573.58 a month), shrinking once family net income passes $38,237. A citizen or permanent-resident family can apply from arrival with form RC66; a temporary resident can start to receive it in the nineteenth month of residence, if they hold a valid permit. Every year after that both parents must file a Canadian return, even a parent with no income. The cost-of-living guide has the formula and the worked examples.

Colleges and universities

Indian students are the largest group of international students in Canada — the Indian government estimates 392,810 at the end of 2024 — and the rules that govern them are national and tightening: the 2026 cap, the attestation letters, and the language and field-of-study conditions on the post-graduation work permit, covered in the immigration section above. A degree from a public university is the safest choice, and the cost-of-living guide has the cost of a year and the 24-hour work rule.

Becoming a Canadian citizen

A permanent resident can apply for citizenship after 1,095 days (three years) physically in Canada in the five years before applying. The five-year window must include at least 730 days as a permanent resident, because each day you spent in Canada as a temporary resident or protected person before that counts as half a day, up to a maximum of 365 days of credit. Adults aged 18 to 54 must show English or French at Canadian Language Benchmark level 4 in speaking and listening and pass the citizenship test, and you may need to have filed Canadian tax returns for at least three of the five years. The adult fee is $653 and the fee for a minor $100 (IRCC fee list of 21 September 2026), and the jobs guide puts processing at roughly a year. Since 15 December 2025, under Bill C-3, citizenship by descent is no longer cut off at the first generation born abroad: for a child born or adopted abroad from that date, a Canadian parent who was themselves born or adopted abroad can pass citizenship on if they spent at least 1,095 days in Canada before the child’s birth or adoption.

India does not allow dual citizenship

Canada lets you hold every citizenship you have; India does not. The day you take the oath of citizenship you stop being an Indian citizen, and the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card is the arrangement that keeps the door open: a lifelong, multiple-entry visa for India for people of Indian origin who hold another passport, with no registration at the police or the foreigners’ registration office however long you stay, and the same treatment as a non-resident Indian in most financial and educational matters. It is a visa and a registration, not citizenship: no vote, no government job, no agricultural land, and Global Affairs Canada, not India, is your consular protection in India.

Four rules from the OCI guide to know before you take the oath. The Indian passport must be surrendered first, as a separate application: a person who became a Canadian citizen on or after 1 June 2010 must formally renounce, and a passport kept or used after the oath attracts penalties that grow with each year kept and each journey made. The OCI application is online first and then in person at a BLS International centre, with biometrics, since 5 April 2026; postal OCI applications are no longer accepted. The fee for a new OCI is $371 plus a $5 community welfare contribution plus BLS’s $1.70 service fee, $377.70 in all, and since 8 July 2026 the card is electronic — an e-OCI downloaded from the portal once the status reads granted, with six to eight weeks as BLS’s quote. And two groups cannot hold one: anyone who is, or whose parent, grandparent or great-grandparent was, a citizen of Pakistan or Bangladesh, and anyone who has served in a foreign military or police force, with the mission’s checklist as the authority.

The Canadian side of the card

A Canada-born child of Indian parents is eligible for an OCI under the same rules; a foreign spouse of an Indian citizen or OCI holder after two years of registered marriage; a Canada-born adult with an Indian-born grandparent. A new Canadian passport needs a free upload to the OCI portal within three months, after which the card’s record is current. Canada taxes its residents on world income whatever card they hold, so the tax section above applies to an OCI holder too, and the OCI guide covers owning and renting property, working and studying in India with the card, and what India taxes. Passport renewal for family members who are still Indian citizens runs through the same BLS centres: see the passport guide.

The two governments fell out in 2023 and have spent 2025 and 2026 rebuilding the relationship. What follows is the dated record and what has changed in practice for an Indian in Canada; it takes no side on the underlying dispute, on which the two governments’ accounts differ.

India’s July 2026 brief puts two-way trade in 2025 at CAD 13.55 billion in goods and CAD 19.62 billion in services. India’s Secretary (East) said on 2 March 2026 that the two sides were still working to restore diplomatic staff to their earlier levels. The two countries have resumed a security dialogue at the level of national security advisers (India’s adviser visited Canada on 6–8 February 2026), agreed to institutionalise a Defence Dialogue, and held the third Consular Dialogue. The 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182, in which 329 people were killed, and the Nijjar case are the two events that run through the relationship, and the community’s views of both differ.

What it means in practice

• Visas for Canadians. A Canadian citizen without an OCI can apply for an Indian e-visa, restored on 22 November 2023, or for a paper visa through BLS. BLS’s Canadian page lists the paper-visa types as entry, business, medical, student and conference, and says all visa applications must be lodged in person with biometrics. The Vancouver consulate’s tourist-visa page still said, on 23 October 2026, that previously issued 10-year paper tourist visas are not valid for travel to India and that it would notify any reinstatement. An OCI holder is not affected: the OCI is a lifelong visa.
• Passports and OCI. Consular services — passports, OCI, surrender, police clearance, attestation — are open at the three missions and BLS, as the passport guide and OCI guide describe. Canada joined the Apostille Convention on 11 January 2024, and BLS says an apostille issued in Canada no longer needs a further attestation by an Indian mission.
• Students and workers. The High Commission’s website lets Indian students register online; the study-permit and work-permit rules are Canada’s, not India’s, and are covered in the immigration section above.
• Flights and trade. Trade is covered above; for flights, check the airline for current schedules, because this guide does not carry them.

The state of the relationship can change in either direction, and a statement from either government after 23 October 2026 supersedes this section. The missions’ contact details are in the last section.

Most of Canada’s Hindu temples and gurdwaras are in the Greater Toronto Area, with Metro Vancouver’s gurdwaras next, and every city with a community of any size has at least one of each. The temples and gurdwaras directory lists 91 places with their street addresses and the worship hours each one publishes, checked on 22 October 2026: 53 Hindu, 36 Sikh and 2 Jain, in 14 regions. Forty-one of them are in the Toronto area — Toronto 10, Brampton 13, Mississauga 7, and Scarborough, Markham and Richmond Hill 11.

Some of these are older than the cities around them. The Khalsa Diwan Society was founded in 1906 and opened its first gurdwara on West 2nd Avenue in Vancouver in January 1908; its Ross Street building, designed by Arthur Erickson, was finished in April 1970, and its kitchen serves 400 to 500 free meals a day. The Gur Sikh Temple in Abbotsford opened in 1911 and has been a National Historic Site of Canada since 2002. Gurdwaras serve langar, a free vegetarian meal, to anyone, and a visit to one or to a mandir is the quickest way into the community: you cover your head and take your shoes off at a gurdwara and eat sitting on the floor, you take your shoes off at a mandir and keep to the public parts, and many places close for part of the afternoon and change their times on festival days, so check the temple’s own page before a long drive.

The directory leaves out a place whose address could not be confirmed, so a small shrine or a new congregation may be missing: tell us through the report link, or ask in the groups. The city guides have a worship section of their own, with the newer temples and the associations and classes that meet in them.

Canada has no statutory holiday for any Indian festival, so celebrations fall on the weekends around the day and on the evening itself; Diwali is Sunday 8 November 2026, so most people are free that day, but in a year when it falls on a weekday it is a working day unless an employer or school agrees otherwise. The calendar below is the one the city guides carry, from the organisers’ own pages, and the live listings under this section and the events page for Canada show what has been added since.

Diwali events, as the organisers list them

• Greater Toronto Area. The free Diwali Festival of Lights at Nathan Phillips Square on 24 and 25 October, North York’s Diwali Fest at Mel Lastman Square from 23 October, Gerrard India Bazaar’s Diwali Mela on Saturday 7 November from 18:00 to 22:00, and on 8 November the City of Brampton’s free Diwali Mela at Sesquicentennial Park, with fireworks at 19:30 and a drone show at 20:15, weather permitting. Canada Diwali RazzMatazz ran at Mississauga’s Celebration Square from 9 to 11 October.
• Metro Vancouver. The Diwali Celebration Society’s Diwali Fest series, six free events from 24 October to 15 November, RED FM’s Diwali Dhamaka at Surrey Civic Plaza on Saturday 7 November, and the gurdwaras’ Bandi Chhor Divas on the 8th.
• Calgary and Edmonton. RED FM’s Diwali Dhamaka in north-east Calgary on Sunday 1 November and the Indian Society of Calgary’s Diwali Fest on Saturday 14 November; in Edmonton a free community Diwali event with a permitted fireworks display at Mill Woods Park on 8 November, from 18:00 to 21:00.
• Montreal. A Diwali Gala in Saint-Laurent on 24 October and Lakshmi Puja at the mandirs on the day.

Fireworks at home are a trap, and the rule is the city’s

Fireworks are municipal law, and the neighbouring cities of Brampton, Mississauga and Toronto disagree about them. The table is what the city guides read on each city’s own page between 17 and 22 October; check your city’s bylaw before you buy.

The festival page, Diwali in Canada, keeps the full list as organisers add events, and the Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and other city guides carry the festival year for each city.

Indian newcomers everywhere look for the WhatsApp group first, and Canada is no different: typically one for flat-hunting, one for the parents at a school, one for a home town, an alumni batch or a temple, and a great many for international students. The groups are how the community organises itself, and this guide will not pretend otherwise.

What the groups are good at, and what they are not

They are fast. Ask at nine in the evening which clinic near you is taking new patients, or whether the train is running, and someone answers before ten. But you need to know someone to get the link; the links that circulate go stale; a group of a thousand has nobody checking who joined; every member can see your phone number; and the answers scroll away, so the same questions about health cards, rents and work permits come round every week. They are also where the scams start — the “basement for international students, e-transfer the deposit today” messages and the “LMIA job, pay the consultant first” ones — and the jobs guide names them. If you have been cheated, report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (1-888-495-8501) and to the police, and tell the group so that the next person does not pay.

What Namaste Community adds

Namaste Community’s app and website have local groups, which are moderated and tied to a place, events near you, a directory of Indian businesses and Ask, where members answer questions. You can post under your name or anonymously. The Canadian groups are at /groups/in/canada; the events page for Canada lists Indian events in every city, with the Diwali page for the season; and the Canadian directory lists grocers, sweet shops, restaurants, tiffin services and professionals.

Your first week, in practice

1. Open the Canadian groups and join the one for your city, and the one for your language or interest. Read before you post: the paperwork answers are usually there already.
2. Go to one event in your first fortnight — a gurdwara’s langar, an evening at a mandir, a Navratri night, a Diwali mela. It is the fastest way from “the Indian community in Canada” as a phrase to three people whose names you know.
3. Ask the question you actually have, and say which province and city you are in and which permit you hold: the health card, the rent rules and the childcare fee all depend on it.
4. When you have found your flat, your clinic and your grocer, leave a review or an answer for the next person from Hyderabad, Ludhiana or Kochi.

If the group you need is not listed — a Telugu parents’ group in Calgary, a Malayali nurses’ group in Winnipeg — ask in the general Canada group; someone is usually looking for the same thing.

Three missions, three jurisdictions

India has one High Commission and two Consulates General in Canada, and your mission is fixed by the postal code of the address you can prove, not by convenience. The jurisdictions are the High Commission’s own, as the Vancouver consulate publishes them.

A Montréal address belongs to Ottawa, not Toronto, and a file lodged at the wrong mission is returned; the passport guide has the postal-code detail.

BLS International runs the counters

The missions take nothing at their own counters for routine services. BLS International runs the Indian Visa and Consular Application Centres — twelve of them: Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Winnipeg and Halifax for the Toronto jurisdiction; Vancouver, Surrey, Calgary, Edmonton and Regina for the Vancouver one; Ottawa and Montréal for Ottawa — open 08:00 to 16:00, Monday to Saturday, with submissions taken until 14:30. BLS’s own page, read on 23 October 2026, says that visa applications and, since 5 April 2026, OCI applications must be submitted in person because biometrics are captured, and that postal applications are not accepted; it also says BLS has no say in the decision, which is the mission’s, and that nobody at BLS will ever ask for a payment to secure an appointment or speed up a file. The fees, the documents and the timings are in the passport and OCI guides, and the OCI guide explains the optional extras at the counter, which are where most of the complaints come from.

What the missions do

Passports (ten years for an adult, five for a child, renewable up to a year before expiry), OCI cards, surrender certificates, police clearance certificates, attestation, life certificates and emergency certificates are consular work, and visas for Canadians and other foreign nationals are issued through BLS and the e-visa portal. Indian citizens in distress can use the MADAD grievance portal, and the Indian Community Welfare Fund, to which every OCI applicant contributes $5, pays for the tickets home of stranded Indian nationals. Indian students can register with the High Commission online.

Staying safe

Canadian cities have the usual urban risks, and the Indian neighbourhoods are busy family places where most newcomers feel safe; the city guides carry the local specifics. The dangers that actually hurt Indian newcomers are financial: the rental deposit for a flat you have not seen; the LMIA or job letter bought from an agent; the “consultant” who is not licensed; and the telephone call. The missions have warned that a caller who shows the mission’s own number, says there is an error in your passport, OCI or immigration file, and demands money or your details before a deportation or a “digital arrest” is a fraud — the missions do not make such calls, do not decide Canadian visas or permanent residence, and write only from addresses ending @mea.gov.in. Hang up, and report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre on 1-888-495-8501 and the local police.

The help lines are the same across most of the country: 911 for police, fire and ambulance, 811 for nurse advice and health services, 988 for a mental-health crisis by call or text, and 311 for city services in most large cities. The Indian missions’ own pages carry their emergency lines for Indian nationals.