Canadian Immigration Minister John McCallum has said visa requirements for Bulgarian and Canadian nationals will be dropped as of next December.

The Canadian government intends to enforce the step as of December 01, 2017, according to a government statement.

However, Ottama would reserve the right to reimpose the visa requirement "should irregular migration trends increase significantly from either country."

"In the lead-up to the full visa lifts, Canada intends to implement partial lifts for eligible Romanian and Bulgarian citizens travelling to Canada for May 1, 2017," the statement reads.

It also says Romanian and Bulgarian citizens who have held a Canadian temporary resident visa in the past 10 years or who currently hold a valid United States (U.S.) non-immigrant visa would not require a temporary resident visa and would be able to fly to or transit through Canada with an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) instead of a visa.

Lifting the visa requirements was a key condition set by Bulgaria and Romania in exchange for support of the EU-Canada Compehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) signed on Sunday.