Whether you’re visiting Canada, welcoming a loved one, or heading abroad, Protecto arranges travel coverage matched to your profile, issued by our Canadian partner insurers.
Travel Insurance for Visitors & Newcomers
These products are designed for people staying temporarily in Canada who are not covered by a provincial health plan.
- Insurance for Visitors to Canada: Emergency medical coverage for any temporary stay in Canada.
- Super Visa Insurance: Mandatory insurance for parents and grandparents applying for a Super Visa.
- Insurance for Foreign Workers: Coverage during the waiting period before provincial health plan eligibility.
- Insurance for International Students: Coverage for the entire duration of your studies in Canada.
Travel Insurance for Canadian Residents
These products protect Canadians travelling outside their province or country.
- Travel Insurance for Canadians: Emergency medical, trip cancellation, and baggage coverage for any out-of-province trip.
- Travel Insurance for Snowbirds: Specialized coverage for extended winter stays in the US and beyond.
- Travel Insurance for Expatriates: For Canadians living or working abroad for more than 6 months.
What travel insurance covers
Every one of these products shares the same core: emergency medical costs incurred during the trip. In practice that means hospitalization, physician visits, diagnostic tests, medication prescribed following a covered emergency, ambulance transport and, if your condition requires it, medical repatriation.
Plans built for Canadian residents add benefits tied to the trip itself: trip cancellation or interruption, flight delay, lost or delayed baggage. These are usually optional and are chosen when you buy.
The coverage amount is chosen at purchase too. $100,000 is the most common threshold, and it is the minimum IRCC requires for a Super Visa application. Higher amounts are available: a long stay, or a visitor over 60, often justifies going past the minimum.
What travel insurance does not cover
Travel insurance is emergency insurance, not a health plan. It does not replace a routine check-up, regular dental care, or a treatment planned in advance.
Three limits appear in almost every contract:
Medical conditions that are not stable. A health problem known before departure is covered only if it has remained stable for the period the contract requires, often 3 to 6 months for travellers 55 and over. Our guide to pre-existing conditions and stability explains how that window is counted.
Care planned ahead of time. A trip taken in order to receive medical treatment is not covered.
The waiting period. A policy bought after arriving in Canada normally carries a delay before coverage takes effect. That is the subject of our guide on buying insurance after arriving in Canada.
Your provincial plan does not follow you all the way
This is the most common misunderstanding among Canadian travellers. RAMQ keeps covering you outside Quebec, but it reimburses at Quebec rates, not at the rates billed where you are. In the United States the gap is severe: an emergency-room visit routinely bills in the thousands of dollars, a hospital stay of a few days in the tens of thousands, and ambulance and repatriation are essentially at your expense. The detail is in our guide on travelling to the US when RAMQ is not enough.
The same logic runs in reverse for visitors. Medical care in Canada is not free for non-residents, and a hospital stay is billed at full price.
When to buy your travel insurance
Before departure, in almost every case.
- Visitors and Super Visa: coverage has to be in force on arrival. For a Super Visa, the policy must cover a full twelve months from the date of entry.
- Snowbirds: buying early fixes your state of health as the reference point, rather than discovering an exclusion once you are down south. Our guide on when snowbirds should buy sets out the timeline.
- Canadian travellers: as soon as the dates are booked, especially if you add cancellation coverage, which is worth nothing once the trip has started.
What moves the price
Four factors, in this order:
Age. The main lever, ahead of everything else.
Length and destination. Coverage is priced by the day, and a destination where care is expensive, the United States first among them, prices higher.
The coverage amount. Going from $100,000 to $300,000 raises the premium, though usually less than the jump in coverage suggests.
The deductible. A $1,000 deductible instead of $0 lowers the premium, at the cost of an amount payable when you claim. Check whether it applies per policy or per claim: our guide on choosing your deductible explains the difference.
There is no single rate, the price is calculated on your profile. See yours in a few minutes: visitor insurance if you are coming to Canada, travel insurance for Canadians if you are leaving it.
Which travel insurance should you choose?
There is no one right answer, there is one right answer per profile. A 70-year-old visitor whose diabetes is stable, a 22-year-old student here for two semesters, and a snowbird couple leaving for six months in Florida have neither the same needs nor the same constraints.
We compare the plans from our Canadian partner insurers and select the one that fits your situation. Still weighing two products? Our orientation guide narrows it down in a few questions, our travel insurance FAQ answers the rest, and our advisors will guide you free of charge at (514) 500-7220.