July 2026

On July 15^th, IRCC announced that it was indefinitely pausing the intake of new applications under the Parents and Grandparents (PGP) Program. Specifically, it noted that it would not ‘receive new interest to sponsor forms or invite potential sponsors to apply until further notice’. However, it will continue to process existing applications, with up to 15,000 individuals to be accepted through the program in 2026. No mention was made of what will happen after 2026, or what will become of the remainder of the 50,500 applications waiting to be processed.^[1]

 

The PGP program has operated on a lottery basis since 2017. However, no new interest-to-sponsor forms have been accepted since 2020. Instead, each year since then, IRCC has drawn applicants from forms submitted in 2020. Since over 200,000 individuals submitted interest-to-sponsor forms in 2020, IRCC could have continued to draw from this same pool of applicants for several years, without having to open the pool up to new applicants. At the end of 2025, about 54,000 expressions of interest-to-sponsor forms remained in the pool.

 

IRCC has another family sponsorship program, formally known as the ‘Other Relative’ program, but colloquially known within immigration law circles as the ‘Lonely Canadian’ program. It has this nickname because it can only be accessed by a Canadian citizen or permanent resident who has no family living in Canada. If the sponsor is single, has no children, and has no extended family who is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, then they can choose one family member to sponsor for permanent residence. However, there is a catch. They can’t have a family member they could otherwise sponsor. This includes a parent or grandparent. This means that anyone who had a living parent or grandparent, even though they couldn’t submit an interest-to-sponsor form, was shut out from sponsoring another family member, such as their brother or sister.

 

Similarly, individuals couldn’t use the Other Relative program to sponsor their parent or grandparent because, if they had a living parent or grandparent, they were excluded from using the program.  The regulation that establishes the program is challenging to read, but it is clear that a relative only qualifies if the sponsor does not have a parent or grandparent:

• 117 (1) A foreign national is a member of the family class if, with respect to a sponsor, the foreign national is
• (h) a relative of the sponsor, regardless of age, if the sponsor does not have a spouse, a common-law partner, a conjugal partner, a child, a mother or father, a relative who is a child of that mother or father, a relative who is a child of a child of that mother or father, a mother or father of that mother or father or a relative who is a child of the mother or father of that mother or father

If it seems unfair to you that the existence of a closed program can be used to shut someone out from eligibility for another program, you are not alone; a Board Member of the Immigration Appeal Division, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada named M. Kingma agrees with you. M. Kingma was asked to hear the appeal (VC5-25829) by a Canadian woman who applied to sponsor her mother through the Other Relative program and was denied. In allowing the appeal, the Board Member made the following remarks:

• [20] In the unique circumstances of this case, exclusion of the Appellant's mother from the sponsorship opportunity created by paragraph 117(1)(h) of the Regulations is incongruous with legislative intent to give the lone Canadian an opportunity for family companionship. The intent to provide family companionship for the lone Canadian can co-exist with the procedural purpose of the Ministerial Instructions because access to an "other relative" is only allowed when the sponsor has no relatives with status in Canada or who may otherwise be sponsored…
• [21] It is not reasonable or in keeping with the intent of paragraph 117(1)(h) of the Regulations that a person with no relatives except one parent could not sponsor that parent as their other relative. Nor is it reasonable or in keeping with the intent of paragraph 117(1)(h) that a parent may not be selected as the one relative allowed under paragraph 117(1)(h) of the Regulations while a distant relative would be eligible.

Unfortunately, I am advised by the lawyer who represented the appellant that the Minister (representing IRCC) has just filed an appeal of the Immigration Appeal Division’s decision with the Federal Court. Though I am not surprised, I am disappointed.

 

For individuals wishing to use the Other Relative program but needing to ‘get around’ the fact that they have a living parent or grandparent, one option is to request humanitarian and compassionate considerations to overcome the legislative restriction. Section 25.1 of Canada’s immigration law allows officers to grant applicants an exemption from any applicable criteria of the legislation on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.  The fact that the parent and grandparent program is indefinitely paused, leaving the Canadian sponsor ‘indefinitely lonely’ in Canada, could be a compassionate ground to be advanced. It could be more tricky to advance this argument on behalf of parents and grandparents, however. Under the lottery system, it was specifically prohibited to use humanitarian and compassionate considerations to ‘get around’ the lottery selection process.^[2] Officers may be less open to the idea of parents and grandparents using humanitarian and compassionate considerations to fit into the Other Relative category, especially in light of what is now going to be a Federal Court case. They also may be less likely to consider humanitarian and compassionate considerations for elderly parents, in contrast to younger family members who would be more able to establish themselves in Canada through employment. Humanitarian and compassionate factors are very fact-specific, with each application being determined on a case-by-case basis.  

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^[1] I base this figure on the number of individuals noted as waiting for a decision on a submitted application, combining the numbers for those destined for inside and outside Quebec: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/application/check-processing-times.html

^[2] See, for example, the Ministerial Instructions for the 2025 lottery: Humanitarian and compassionate requests

A request made under subsection 25(1) of the Act from outside Canada and that accompanies an application that was not accepted for processing under these Instructions will not be processed.

https://gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2025/2025-12-27/html/notice-avis-eng.html#ne1