I'm a Canadian licensed private pilot (PPL = Private pilot license, or the rest of you). We have class 1 and class 3 like in the US. Class 1 is for commercial (CPL), class 3 is for private. Class 2 is only for flight engineers and ATC. Class 4 is for everything "less" than a PPL. As jwenting said, the requirements aren't quite equal between countries, but conform mostly to the same standards. The license is ICAO, the medical is not. If you lie to the doctor, your medical is automatically invalid. For example, if you lie about having diabetes, you get into an accident, and they discover you have diabetes, you then get charged with flying without a valid medical certificate. In other words, don't do it. The various tests will likely pick it up anyway. The proper way to go is to get an exemption, a restricted medical, or a subsequent test. For example, I can never read those colour blindness plates (Ishihara pseudo-iso-chromatic-plates). To avoid having a restricted medical certificate, I did a Farnsworth D-15 test to show I am not colour blind enough to be considered colour blind. (Colour blindness is a gradient, not a positive/negative.) Most countries (including the JAA I think) will allow you to convert a foreign license to a local license, but they usually require you to do a separate medical exam.
