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This year, the federal government will not accept any new applications from people who want to sponsor their parents or grandparents to come to Canada as permanent residents under a program aimed at promoting family reunification.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said the change is part of efforts to manage the system responsibly and reduce wait times.
In a statement posted online Wednesday, the department said interest in the program continues to outpace the number of places available.
There are already 60,500 applications pending and processing wait times are about 33 months, or up to 66 months in Quebec.
The program was launched in 2020 when more than 200,000 permanent residents and citizens expressed interest in sponsoring parents and grandparents to come to Canada.
Every year, thousands of people who express interest are selected to submit a formal application.
A Department of Immigration spokesman said the pause would not change the decision to approve up to 15,000 people for permanent residence in 2026 and 2027 as part of the Government’s immigration level plan.
The plan, released last fall, sets a goal of welcoming 380,000 permanent residents per year between 2026 and 2028. It also cuts the number of temporary work and student visas issued in 2026 by nearly half the number issued in 2025.
Immigration support reduced in 2023, 2024
The overall effect of the adjusted immigration plan is that population growth is expected to remain flat this year for the second year in a row.
Immigration has become a politically charged topic in recent years. Federal Conservatives say the system is broken and blame the Liberals for pursuing policies that have undermined the long-standing consensus that immigration is a net positive for Canada.
Briefing materials prepared for Immigration Minister Lena Diab in 2025 note that the government’s own poll found Canadians’ support for immigration fell in 2023 and 2024 to lows not seen in 30 years. In November 2024, more than half of Canadians surveyed by the department said they believed too many immigrants were coming to the country.
In a video posted on social media in May, Diab said the government was “working to restore control and sustainability to our immigration system.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government also passed legislation in March that tightens eligibility for asylum claims (retroactively canceling thousands of applications that were made after the new deadline) and gives Ottawa the power to cancel visas en masse.
The Immigration Department has faced delays on a number of programs for years as it struggles to process applications from hundreds of thousands of people.
As of April 30, the department had more than 2.1 million applications across all streams, and more than 922,000 of them were considered backlogged, meaning they took longer than the department’s own service standards. Less than half of applications for permanent residence were processed within service standards, according to publicly available government data.
From January to April this year, 112,900 people became permanent residents through a variety of different programs.
A pause on new applications for parent and grandparent sponsorship is in place “until further notice”, the government has said.
Canadian citizens and permanent residents can still apply for a “super visa,” allowing their parents and grandparents to come here for five years at a time and up to 10 years on a temporary basis.