Canada pauses applications for parent, grandparent immigration sponsorship program

OTTAWA — The federal government will not accept any new applications this year from people who want to sponsor their parents and grandparents to come to Canada as permanent residents under a program meant to promote family reunification.

The Immigration Department said the change is part of an effort to responsibly manage the system and reduce wait times.

In a statement posted online Wednesday, the department said interest in the program continues to exceed the number of available spaces.

There are 60,500 applications in progress already and wait times for processing sit at around 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 a parent or grandparent to come to Canada.

Each year, thousands of people who expressed interest are selected to formally apply.

An official with the Immigration Department said the pause will 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 levels plan.

That plan, released last fall, sets a target of admitting 380,000 permanent residents per year between 2026 and 2028. It also cut the number of temporary work and student visas issued in 2026 to almost half the number issued in 2025.

The overall impact 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 been a politically charged topic in recent years. The federal Conservatives say the system is broken and accuse the Liberals of pursuing policies that have undermined a long-held consensus that immigration is a net positive for Canada.

Briefing materials prepared for Immigration Minister Lena Diab in 2025 noted that the government's own polling found Canadians' support for immigration dropped in 2023 and 2024 to a low not seen in 30 years. In November 2024, more than half of Canadians surveyed by the department said they felt there were too many immigrants coming to the country.

In a video posted to social media in May, Diab said the government is "working to restore control and sustainability to our immigration system."

Prime Minister Mark Carney's government also passed a law in March that tightens eligibility for asylum claims — retroactively cancelling thousands of claims that were made outside of a new deadline — and gives Ottawa the power to mass-cancel visas.

The Immigration Department has been dealing with backlogs across a number of programs for years as it has struggled to process applications from hundreds of thousands of people.

As of April 30, the department had more than 2.1 million applications in all streams, and more than 922,000 of those were considered to be in backlog — meaning they took longer than the department's own service standards. Less than half of the applications for permanent residency were processed within service standards, according to the government's publicly available data.

Between January and April of this year, 112,900 people became permanent residents through a variety of different programs.

The pause on accepting new applications for parent and grandparent sponsorships is in effect "until further notice," the government said.

Canadian citizens and permanent residents can still apply for a "super visa" to allow their parents and grandparents to visit for five years at a time, and for up to 10 years total, on a temporary basis.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 15, 2026.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press