Ottawa let a permanent residency sponsorship exemption for refugees expire on Sept. 10 because of unspecified “potential integrity concerns,” an Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson told The Canadian Press, three years after a memo written for the immigration minister described the same policy as posing a “minimal risk” to program integrity.
The temporary policy, introduced in 2019, allowed certain refugees who had already been granted permanent residence to sponsor close family members who were not listed on their original applications. The most common case was a child who had not been born when the application was filed. Advocates told The Canadian Press the exemption was also used by LGBTQ+ refugees to sponsor partners in countries where those relationships are criminalized.
Under the standard rule, every permanent residence applicant must give the government a list of family members for security and medical screening, whether or not those relatives intend to come to Canada. A permanent resident who omits someone from that list is barred from sponsoring them later. The 2019 policy was the exception to that bar, and it is now gone.
The department has not detailed its reasoning. The Canadian Press reported that it asked the government what had changed since the earlier assessment, and whether applicants had been misusing the exemption, and had not received a response. The memo in question was drafted before the policy’s last extension in September 2023. It recorded roughly 2,000 applications under the exemption, about 90 per cent of which had been approved.
In an email sent Friday, after CP first reported the change, the department said exemptions can still be granted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. The government’s own online portal currently estimates the wait for a humanitarian and compassionate application at more than 10 years.
That gap is the substance of the objection. Jamie Liew, a University of Ottawa law professor who co-authored a 2017 study that contributed to the creation of the exemption, called the department’s stated reasoning “extremely vague” and raised two questions with CP. “First, is there evidence or data that shows that there is a misuse of this program? And secondly, (humanitarian and compassionate applications) are basically non-functional,” Liew said. “Our research is very clear, even before the increase in the wait times, but now it is virtually impossible to bring people through a (humanitarian and compassionate) application.”
Refugee advocates were told on Sept. 9 that the policy would end, and were given no explanation, according to CP. The Canadian Council for Refugees wrote to Immigration Minister Lena Diab last week asking her to restore it.
Gauri Sreenivasan, the council’s co-executive director, said the organization had worked with the department for years to establish the policy, which she said addressed “a clear and present danger for refugee children and families.”
“If there were any issues to resolve with the temporary policy, we are and would have been ready to engage on those for longer-term solutions,” Sreenivasan said. “As it stands, the decision to rescind the policy suddenly and go back to relying on (the humanitarian and compassionate claim process) to resolve issues, given its known inaccessibility, is a poor and cruel choice that we know will hurt many families. There is a better way forward and it starts with consultation.”
The department spokesperson said it will continue to monitor the effect of the change, and encouraged permanent residence applicants “to declare their family members, which is the best way to prevent lengthy or permanent family separation.”
Liew said that advice assumes a completeness refugee applicants often cannot deliver. Applicants fleeing conflict may not know whether their children are alive at the time they file, she told CP. Others may have limited literacy, or may depend on a translator to complete the form. She also warned that the department’s growing use of digital automation will produce more separated families rather than fewer.
“The form is meant to be a gateway for inquiry and assessment. And then to punish people for that seems really, really unreasonable and harsh,” Liew said.
The mechanism here is worth noting. The exemption was never a statute. It was a temporary policy the department created, extended in September 2023, and has now allowed to lapse. Ending it required no bill, no vote and no public consultation, which is why the advocates who learned of it on Sept. 9 are writing letters rather than filing objections.
Source: reporting by David Baxter, The Canadian Press, first published Sept. 14, 2026.
