A 62-step guide to the tax filings, government benefits, banking, healthcare, and legal paperwork you need to handle in Canada — before you ever book a flight.
Written for the practical realities of leaving Canada after 55 — not for 30-year-olds chasing visas on Instagram.
Search "retiring abroad from Canada" and you'll get a thousand articles about visas, cost of living, and the best beaches. What you won't get is a straight answer to the questions that actually determine whether your move goes smoothly or becomes expensive:
These aren't edge cases. They're the first questions any cross-border advisor will ask you — and by the time you're sitting in that advisor's office, at C$300+ an hour, you want to already know your own answers.
Here's the part most people underestimate: almost everything in this guide is technically available for free. It's sitting in CRA publications, Service Canada FAQs, and provincial health ministry websites right now. But it's written for professionals, scattered across a dozen different sources, and none of it tells you which parts actually apply to your specific situation. Piecing it together yourself realistically takes 20, 30, even 40 hours of your own evenings and weekends — and that's before the stress of not knowing whether you found everything.
This guide compresses that research into a few focused sittings, organized in the order you'll actually need it.
If you're 55 or older and seriously weighing a move abroad, you've probably already noticed the problem: everyone has an opinion, but almost nobody gives you a specific, sourced answer to your actual situation.
Immigration lawyers know visas. Tax accountants know tax. Financial advisors know investments. Almost nobody walks you through all of it, in order, the way it actually unfolds — starting from the Canadian side, before you've committed to a destination.
The Canadian Exit was built to be that starting point. Not a substitute for professional advice — a way to walk into that advice already knowing what to ask, what applies to you, and what doesn't.
The guide is organized the way your actual planning will unfold — not alphabetically, not randomly. Each step tells you exactly what to verify and when professional advice is worth paying for.
Get your paperwork foundation in place before anything else — including the one document that saves you from re-explaining your situation to every new advisor.
Passport validity, name-consistency issues, and the apostille process Canada switched to in 2024 — most guides still describe the old system.
Confirm an actual visa pathway exists for your situation before a real-estate agent gets ahead of the legal reality.
The single most misunderstood part of leaving Canada — including a full deep dive on departure ("exit") tax.
The 20-year residency rule that decides whether your OAS continues for life or stops after six months.
Keep logging into your Canadian accounts once your Canadian phone number is gone, plus currency-transfer tools that don't quietly eat 3–5% of every transfer.
Your province's actual absence rule, and how far provincial coverage really goes once you're outside Canada.
Wills, powers of attorney, and how Canadian and foreign estate taxes can both apply to the same property.
A contingency plan for the scenario nobody wants to think about — including the healthcare gap of an unplanned return.
Most guides give you a checklist item and move on. This guide has four full deep dives — multi-page breakdowns of the topics that actually produce a real dollar figure if you get them wrong:
How the calculation works, what property is excluded, the forms you'll file, and how to defer payment instead of paying immediately.
The specific fix for "my bank still texts my old Canadian number," plus which currency-exchange services don't bury a markup in the rate.
A real orientation to the names you'll actually encounter while shopping for coverage, so you're not starting from zero.
The collision between Canada's deemed-disposition rule and a destination country's own estate tax, and what it means for your will.
Yes — that's the point. Most of the 62 steps (tax residency, OAS, your will, vital records) apply regardless of where you end up. You don't need a destination to start.
No. This is general educational information. It tells you what to verify and when a licensed professional's advice is worth paying for — it's not a substitute for that advice.
Some of it — Step 1 specifically helps you figure out which category your move falls into, since that changes which parts of the guide are relevant to you.
Digital PDF, delivered instantly after purchase. It's formatted at 8"×10" so it prints cleanly at home or at a copy shop if you'd rather work through it on paper.
Consider the alternative: a single hour with a cross-border tax advisor typically runs C$300 or more. This guide costs less than lunch out — and it's built so that when you do sit down with an advisor, you're not paying that hourly rate to learn things you could have already known.
If you're not satisfied, email us within 14 days of purchase for a full refund — no questions asked.