 Is it very easy and straightforward to apply for an ETA? An ETA is an electronic travel authorization. If you're traveling to Canada from certain countries and your visa exempt and you're on a list of countries, you need to apply for this before you can get on a flight. Now a lot of people think that this is a very easy application, it just takes about five minutes and in most cases it does. However, if you have a certain immigration history in Canada, if you have previous criminality, it's actually a very delicate situation because what's going to happen is you're going to go into apply and once you're answering the question, there's going to be a section with specific questions and if you lie or if you don't include the right information, what will happen is that it can take weeks and weeks or months or maybe sometimes you won't even hear back and you'll never know what happened or you'll be refused and that could create a lot of problems for you in the future. So if you have complex immigration history or previous criminality, it's better to speak to a lawyer, an immigration lawyer to find out how to apply for your ETA.