This year, the federal government will stop accepting new applications from individuals who wish to sponsor their parents and grandparents for permanent residency in Canada, which is a program designed to support family reunification.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) stated that this change aims to better manage the system and cut down on wait times.
In a statement released online on Wednesday, the department noted that interest in the program still surpasses the number of spots available.
Currently, there are 60,500 applications being processed, with wait times reaching about 33 months or as long as 66 months in Quebec.
The program started in 2020 when over 200,000 permanent residents and citizens showed interest in sponsoring a parent or grandparent to move to Canada.
Each year, many people who express interest are chosen to apply formally.
An official from the Immigration Department indicated that this pause won’t affect plans to approve up to 15,000 individuals for permanent residence in 2026 and 2027 as part of the government’s immigration levels strategy.
This plan was announced last fall and aims for an annual intake of 380,000 permanent residents from 2026 through 2028. It also reduced the number of temporary work and student visas issued in 2026 by almost half compared to those issued in 2025.
Decrease in Immigration Support for 2023-2024
The overall effect of these immigration adjustments means population growth is expected to remain stagnant this year for a second consecutive time.
Immigration has become a contentious issue recently. The federal Conservatives argue that the system is flawed and blame the Liberals for policies that they believe have weakened longstanding views about immigration being beneficial for Canada.
Materials prepared for Immigration Minister Lena Diab in 2025 revealed that government polling found public support for immigration fell during 2023 and 2024, reaching its lowest level in three decades. In November 2024, over half of Canadians surveyed expressed concerns about too many immigrants arriving in the country.
In a video shared on social media back in May, Diab mentioned that the government is “working to restore control and sustainability to our immigration system.”
The administration led by Prime Minister Mark Carney also passed legislation in March tightening eligibility criteria for asylum claims-retroactively rejecting thousands made outside a new deadline-and granting Ottawa authority to cancel visas en masse.
The Immigration Department has been facing backlogs across various programs as it struggles with processing applications from hundreds of thousands of individuals.
As of April 30th, there were more than 2.1 million applications across all categories at the department; over 922,000 were classified as backlogged-meaning they exceeded processing timelines set by the department itself. According to publicly available data from the government, less than half of permanent residency applications were completed within service standards.
Between January and April this year, around 112,900 individuals became permanent residents through multiple programs.
The halt on accepting new parent and grandparent sponsorship applications will remain “until further notice,” according to what the government stated.
Canadian citizens and permanent residents can still submit requests for a “super visa” enabling their parents or grandparents to visit temporarily-up to five years at one time-and possibly totaling ten years overall.
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