Are Roof Rats Legal in Canada? Keeping, Breeding & Selling

Keeping / owning   Unregulated / unclear

Confidence: High · Last verified 2026-06-06

The federal government does not regulate the day-to-day keeping of companion animals, that is left entirely to the provinces and municipalities, and the answer changes drastically at provincial borders. Alberta PROHIBITS keeping any rat (genus Rattus) with no pet exemption; Saskatchewan EXPLICITLY allows the black rat as captive wildlife; Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia allow it. So there is no single Canadian answer, see your province below.

Sources: Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Breeding   Unregulated / unclear

Confidence: High · Last verified 2026-06-06

Federally unregulated; follows provincial possession rules. Prohibited where keeping is banned (Alberta), legal where the species is allowed (SK/ON/QC/BC). Commercial breeders everywhere also face municipal business-licensing, zoning, and provincial animal-welfare standards.

Sources: Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Selling or giving away   Unregulated / unclear

Confidence: High · Last verified 2026-06-06

Federally unregulated within Canada; follows provincial rules and municipal pet-shop / commercial-breeder licensing. Prohibited in Alberta (sale/distribution of a declared pest is banned); legal in SK/ON/QC/BC subject to local business rules.

Sources: Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Transport & import   Legal

Confidence: High · Last verified 2026-06-06

Bringing a pet rat INTO Canada is permissive federally: the CFIA does not require an import permit or veterinary health certificate for pet rodents, you simply declare the animal to the Canada Border Services Agency. The big exceptions: any rodent originating from the continent of Africa is barred (plague/monkeypox rule), airlines may demand their own vet certificate, and exporting live rodents to the Eurasian Economic Union is currently suspended. Critically, your destination PROVINCE’s rules still apply, you may not bring a rat into (or, arguably, through) Alberta at all.

Sources: Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFIA, CFIA

• Declare the animal as a pet to the CBSA at the border
• Confirm it is not African-origin
• Check your airline’s own health-certificate rule

Forms: Bringing animals to Canada, CFIA · Where: Canada Border Services Agency / CFIA National Import Service Centre · Fees: No CFIA fee for pet rodents

Source: Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFIA

• Find your province below
• Check your city/municipal animal bylaws

Source: Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Canada has no single national rule for keeping a pet roof rat (Rattus rattus); it is decided province by province, and the provinces diverge sharply. Saskatchewan explicitly lists the black rat as allowed captive wildlife; Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia all permit it; and federally the CFIA allows import of a pet rat with no permit or health certificate, with one hard exception (no rodents originating from Africa). The outlier, and the one true prohibition in Canada, is Alberta. Under the Agricultural Pests Act and its Pest and Nuisance Control Regulation, the entire genus Rattus is a declared pest, and the Government of Alberta states that it is illegal to own pet rats in Alberta. There is no exemption for a tame, captive-bred animal kept indoors. The rule was written to keep wild Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) from establishing breeding colonies on Alberta’s farmland, but as written it also covers domesticated pet rats that pose none of that agricultural risk and have never founded a wild population.

The ask: Ask Alberta to add a narrow exemption to the Pest and Nuisance Control Regulation for tame, captive-bred companion rats kept indoors, the same kind of carve-out that lets neighbouring provinces allow them safely. The case rests on a cost-benefit judgment that is Alberta’s to make. The province already permits cats and dogs, which are themselves non-native and documented to harm native wildlife, because their companionship is judged worth the trade-off. Whether the limited additional risk of a few sterile, tame, indoor-only pet rats, which have never founded a wild colony, is similarly outweighed by their value as companions is a question to put to the decision-makers, not a conclusion to assert. The change is to the regulation itself (a matter for the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation and your MLA), not a favour the rat-control program can grant, because the program is correctly applying the law as written. Outside Alberta, no change is needed to keep a pet roof rat; confirm your province’s rule and your municipal bylaws.

Where the lever really is: Branch (b): the law as written. The barrier is a deliberate statutory and regulatory listing, not a clerk’s misreading. Alberta’s Pest and Nuisance Control Regulation, made under the Agricultural Pests Act, declares the whole genus Rattus a pest, and the Government of Alberta’s rat-control page states that it is illegal to own pet rats in Alberta, with no pet exemption. The rat-control program is applying that regulation as drafted, so emailing the program to ask permission, or appealing its decision, will not work. The fix is to amend the regulation to add a captive-bred companion-animal exemption, a decision for the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation acting on public and political input. The correct lever is the legislature: your MLA and the Minister. For the other relevant provinces (SK, ON, QC, BC) there is no law-as-written problem to fix; the roof rat is already permitted, so they are a confirm-your-province check, not advocacy targets. On the species-not-domestication point, the fancy rat (Rattus norvegicus) is itself the wild brown rat, domesticated only in the 19th century, so a captive-bred Rattus rattus is the same case one species over: https://blonderoofrat.com/how-the-sewer-rat-became-the-fancy-rat/ .

Where to send it (more than one channel helps):

• Members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, official MLA directory / ‘find your MLA’ (legislature), official contact page
  The prohibition lives in a regulation the Minister and Cabinet control, so the change must come through the political/legislative branch. This official Legislative Assembly page lets any Alberta resident look up and contact their own MLA, the representative who can raise a regulatory amendment or relay constituent demand to the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation. Use it to write your own MLA; never address an individual member by name picked at random.
• Elections Alberta, Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) search (legislature), official contact page
  An independent official tool to confirm which MLA represents your address, in case you are unsure of your constituency before contacting them via the Assembly directory above.
• Alberta Rat Control Program (Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation), official program inbox (executive / agency), rats@gov.ab.ca
  Secondary channel. This is the official inbox of the program that administers the declared-pest rule. It cannot grant a pet exemption on its own (the regulation must change first), but a polite written request for the government’s current position on tame captive-bred companion rats, and for whether a narrow exemption could be recommended to the Minister, puts the ask on record with the administering body and can be cited when you write your MLA. Verified on the Government of Alberta rat-control program page.

A starting-point message, please put it in your own words; a short personal note carries far more weight than an identical form letter:

To my MLA / the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation,

I am writing about Alberta's prohibition on keeping pet rats. Under the Pest and Nuisance Control Regulation, the entire genus Rattus is a declared pest, so even a tame, captive-bred companion rat is illegal to own here.

I understand and support the goal of keeping wild Norway rats from establishing in Alberta's farmland. But the regulation as written also bans domesticated pet rats that are captive-bred, hand-tame, kept entirely indoors, and never released, animals that pose none of the agricultural risk the rule was designed to stop and that have never founded a wild colony.

Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia all allow these pets safely. The issue is not whether a rat can be domesticated; it plainly can. The dog descends from the wolf and the cat from a wild felid, yet both are recognised as domestic because of generations bred for tameness. The fancy rat (Rattus norvegicus) is itself the wild brown rat, domesticated only in the 19th century, so a captive-bred pet rat is the same case. The issue is simply that the species is on a list with no exemption for companion animals.

This is a cost-benefit judgment that belongs to Alberta. The province already permits cats and dogs, themselves non-native and documented to kill native wildlife, because their companionship is judged worth the trade-off. The narrow question is whether the limited additional risk of a few sterile, tame, indoor-only pet rats, which have never founded a wild colony, is outweighed by their value as companions. I am not asking you to reach a particular conclusion, only to weigh that question, which neighbouring provinces have already answered by allowing these pets while keeping their own wild-rat controls in place.

I respectfully ask you to support adding a narrow exemption to the Pest and Nuisance Control Regulation for tame, captive-bred rats kept indoors as pets, while leaving the wild-rat controls fully in place.

Thank you for considering this.

Sincerely,
[Your name]
[Your town and constituency]

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