Notarization is the bridge between private or uncertified documents and the apostille system. When a document does not carry a government-verifiable signature, a notary adds their own verifiable signature and seal.

A notary public is a government-authorized professional licensed to: witness signatures, administer oaths and declarations, certify copies of documents, and authenticate copies. For apostille purposes, the key function is producing a certified true copy.

The process: the notary examines the original document, makes or confirms a copy, signs the copy with wet ink, applies their official stamp or embossed seal, adds the date, and writes the certification statement.

The competent authority never sees the original the notary examined. It sees the notarized copy and checks whether the notary's signature and seal match its registry.

For the competent authority to process a notarized document, all of the following must be present and legible:

• Notary's wet-ink signature
• Official stamp (rubber stamp with the notary's name and commission number) or embossed seal (raised impression)
• Date of notarization
• For a certified true copy: a statement certifying it is a true copy of the original examined
• For a statutory declaration or affidavit: a statement that the declarant appeared before the notary and swore or affirmed the contents

Missing or illegible elements result in the document being returned unprocessed.

This is a common substitution that causes rejections.

A commissioner of oaths can witness signatures and administer oaths in limited contexts - employment forms, insurance documents, some government applications. Commissioners are not authorized to certify true copies for apostille-bound documents.

For apostille submissions, the certifying professional must be a notary public (common-law provinces) or a civil-law notary (Quebec). Submitting a document certified only by a commissioner of oaths is a rejection cause in every Canadian jurisdiction.

Quebec notaries are legal professionals under the Notaries Act - not common-law notary publics. Their acts have the standing of authentic public records under Quebec civil law. This is why the Chambre des notaires must verify the notary's identity before the Ministère de la Justice will apostille the document. The verification step is not a bureaucratic redundancy - it reflects the legal weight of a Quebec notarial act.

A document signed by a Quebec civil-law notary is treated differently from a document signed by a common-law notary public, even if the document types look the same.

RON allows a notary and client to connect by video with digital signatures applied electronically. This is now legal in Ontario and some other provinces. However:

Ontario's ODS requires physical, wet-ink documents. A document notarized remotely as a PDF cannot be submitted to ODS. The fix: print the document and have a licensed Ontario notary certify the printed copy as a true copy with wet ink and embossed seal.

For GAC, the position differs. Contact the Authentication Services Section before sending a digitally signed document - the treatment depends on the specific document.

When notarization is not required

Not all documents need notarization before apostille. Government-issued originals with verifiable official signatures go directly to the competent authority in many cases:

• Ontario polymer birth certificates, business registry documents, recent court documents, and recent postsecondary credentials - direct to ODS, no notarization
• Alberta original polymer vital statistics documents within the cutoff dates - direct to Alberta Ministry of Justice
• BC and Saskatchewan public records similarly - direct to their provincial offices

Check the specific eligibility requirements on each provincial government website before booking a notary. Notarizing something that does not need it costs money and time with no benefit.