What the letter is, and why it is scarce
An attestation letter is a place in a queue that has a fixed length. It is issued by your institution out of an allocation set by the province, and neither your institution nor the province can create more of them once the allocation is used.
A refusal spends the letter
This applies to a provincial or territorial attestation letter. Quebec issues a different document under its own rules, which we do not advise on, and those rules on reuse are not the ones set out here.
You may reuse the same attestation letter only where your previous application was withdrawn before a decision, or was returned without being accepted into processing. If it was approved or refused, the letter is spent.
That changes what a refusal means on this route. Reapplying is not simply a matter of filing a better application, because you must first obtain a new letter, from the current year's allocation, and the institution may not have one to give you. Anyone planning to reapply should establish that they can get a letter before spending anything else.
- Tied to the cap year, not to your start date. A 2026 letter is valid to the end of 2026. It must be valid when you apply, and unused allocation does not carry into the next year.
- One per applicant. Even where a family files together.
- Filed without one, the application is returned. Not refused. The fee is refunded, and that is one of the two situations in which the letter survives.
- A new one is needed to change institution. Since 22 January 2025, and in most cases to change level of study as well.
- A new one is needed to restore status. Even at the same institution and the same level.
- The master's and doctoral position has flipped twice. Exempt in 2024, required from 22 January 2025, and exempt again from 1 January 2026 at a public institution. It is worth checking the current position rather than relying on what was true when you started planning.
The 2026 intake, and where Ontario sits
| 2026 | |
|---|---|
| Study permits the department expects to issue in total, every cohort | 408,000 |
| Of those, the permits expected to go to students who need a letter | 180,000 |
| Applications accepted into processing from students who need a letter | 309,670 |
| Of which Ontario's allocation of applications | 104,780 |
| Ontario's issuance target within that | 70,074 |
| Master's and doctoral students at public institutions, exempt from the letter | 49,000 |
| Primary and secondary school students, kindergarten to grade twelve, exempt | 115,000 |
| Other exempt cohorts | 64,000 |
Compare 309,670 with 180,000 rather than with 408,000. The 408,000 is the total across every cohort, including extensions and the students who need no letter. The 180,000 is the part of it expected to go to students who do need one, and the department accepts 309,670 applications against it because not every application succeeds. The total fell from 485,000 in 2024 and 437,000 in 2025, so the direction of travel is downward and a later year should not be assumed from this one.
We could not locate the ministerial instruction that sets the 2026 cap. The published series of study permit instructions ends, on the department's own index, at the instruction effective 10 October 2024. The 2026 figures appear in the allocations notice rather than in an instruction we could find, so we cite the notice and say so rather than implying an instrument we have not read.
Do you need one
These test the main exemptions. Answering correct to all four means you almost certainly need an attestation letter, and answering otherwise to any one of them means you may not.
Your situation
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