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The route most people from Canada take, the mistake to avoid, and the facts that change because you are applying from Canada, each read from the official page it links.
New Zealand's working holiday scheme for Canadians allows a longer stay than most of its schemes, and applicants choose the shorter or the longer visa when they apply. It needs no job offer, but it is not a way to settle: only temporary jobs are allowed, and Immigration New Zealand (INZ) says a permanent job or a longer stay needs a work visa such as the Accredited Employer Work Visa, based on a job offer from an employer INZ has accredited to hire migrants. With that job, the Skilled Migrant Category, the residence visa for skilled workers employed by such a business, can follow.
Two choices are best made from Canada. The first is the visa length: the longer working holiday visa requires a chest X-ray and a medical examination, while a holder of the shorter one who decides to stay on applies from inside New Zealand for a further visa, on a paper form rather than online. The second, for residence, is the degree: INZ's list of qualifications exempt from assessment covers only Canadian bachelor's degrees that require four or more years of full-time study at a listed university, so a bachelor's degree of three years' full-time standard duration, a professional degree in law, medicine, dentistry or veterinary medicine, or a master's degree needs an International Qualification Assessment from NZQA, New Zealand's qualifications authority.
The mistake to avoid is sending the wrong police check. The quick check local police run for a job or volunteering starts from your name and date of birth, while INZ asks for the certified criminal record check based on fingerprints from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada's national police service. The RCMP warns that a fingerprint-based check can take far longer than a name check, and INZ accepts the certificate only while it is recent, so request it early enough to arrive, but not so early that it is stale when you apply.
The Skilled Migrant Category sets no settlement-funds figure: it checks a skilled job offer and a points test instead.
A qualification from Canada is assessed for New Zealand by one of these organisations: New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), International Qualification Assessment.
A certified criminal record check from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), based on fingerprints. In Canada, a local police service or an RCMP-accredited company takes and submits them; from abroad, have ink fingerprints taken and send them to an accredited Canadian company to submit.
New Zealand runs a working holiday scheme for citizens of Canada aged 18 to 35, for a stay of up to 23 months.
Tests New Zealand accepts with centres in Canada include IELTS General Training, IELTS Academic, PTE Academic, TOEFL iBT, OET and Cambridge English.
For New Zealand's skilled residence visas, a citizen of Canada who has spent at least 5 years working or studying in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom or the United States may not need a test at all.
In the 2023 census, 32% of people born in Canada who live in New Zealand lived in the Auckland region, more than in any other region.
Compared with other people born overseas, those born in Canada are most concentrated in the Otago region, among the regions where at least 5% of them live.
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