Parents and Grandparents Program Intake Pause Continues to Reverberate Through Family-Class Files

Canada’s decision to stop accepting new applications under the Parents and Grandparents Program is leaving families without a permanent reunification pathway and no indication of when another opportunity might open.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada confirmed on July 15 that it won’t accept new interest-to-sponsor forms or issue invitations to potential sponsors until further notice. Applications already in the system will continue to be processed, and the department plans to approve up to 15,000 parents and grandparents for permanent residence in 2026. IRCC says the pause will help reduce the existing inventory and make processing times more predictable. IRCC

There are approximately 60,500 applications currently in progress. Processing times have reached about 33 months for applicants destined for provinces outside Quebec and as long as 66 months for those settling in Quebec. With the inventory representing roughly four years of planned admissions at the current target, reopening the program could add more applications than IRCC can process within its established immigration levels.

The 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan allocates 15,000 permanent resident admissions annually to parents and grandparents, down from the 24,500 planned for 2025 and the 21,500 previously planned for 2026. Economic immigration, meanwhile, is allocated 239,800 admissions this year and rises to 244,700 in 2027. Family-class immigration remains slightly more than one-fifth of overall admissions, but most of those spaces are reserved for spouses, partners and dependent children. 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan

The last new interest-to-sponsor pool opened in 2020, attracting more than 200,000 submissions. IRCC continued drawing names from that pool in subsequent years, including invitations for up to 10,000 complete applications in 2025, rather than opening the program to new sponsors. Anyone who became eligible after the 2020 window, or missed it at the time, has never been able to enter the selection pool. IRCC’s 2025 intake notice

The super visa remains the government’s principal alternative. It allows eligible parents and grandparents to visit Canada for up to five years at a time, with multiple entries over as many as 10 years and the possibility of applying for extensions. Recent changes have made its income requirements more flexible, including allowing some income earned by the visiting parent or grandparent to count toward eligibility.

The super visa doesn’t provide permanent residence, however, and requires private health insurance. For families hoping to bring aging parents to Canada permanently, the distinction is substantial. The pause protects IRCC from adding to an already lengthy queue, but it leaves everyone outside the 2020 pool waiting for a reopening date that the department hasn’t provided.