Through the Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP), Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) chooses Canadian sponsors each year who are citizens or permanent residents of Canada who wish to sponsor their elderly family members.
The agency uses a specific lottery mechanism for PGP selections, so it’s not always evident how IRCC chooses these sponsors. Nonetheless, more information about the IRCC’s procedure for choosing PGP candidates can be found in recently released government guidelines.
What process does the IRCC use to select sponsors via the PGP?
From a randomized list of interested parties, the IRCC has chosen prospective sponsors for the most recent PGP intakes to sponsor forms submitted in 2020. First, the first consecutive entry that hasn’t been invited before is uploaded to a bulk email tool by an IRCC agent with a predetermined amount of email addresses. With the use of this bulk email tool, prospective sponsors are invited to submit an application package for sponsorship and permanent residence, along with an invitation to apply (ITA).
Aiming to accept 20,500 complete applications, IRCC handed out 35,700 ITA letters for the 2024 intake. The possibility that some receivers may choose not to submit an application was taken into account by the greater number of ITAs.
A note on the 2024 PGP
Because IRCC chose to draw from the 2020 pool of sponsors who submitted an interest to sponsor form, certain conditions are in place even for those who received an ITA through the PGP this year. These rules were also in place in previous years that IRCC considered sponsors from the 2020 pool and may be enforced in the future as well.
Documentation Requirements
Sponsors i invited to submit a sponsorship application for the 2024 intake, had to include a copy of the same “status in Canada” document that was submitted with their 2020 interest to sponsor form. If there was any discrepancy between the information provided in the interest to sponsor form and the sponsorship application, the potential sponsor has to provide an explanation for the change and satisfactory evidence demonstrating that the application pertains to the same individual identified on the 2020 form.
Priority of Processing
IRCC processes applications to sponsor parents and grandparents on a first-in, first-out basis. This means that new applications submitted for the 2024 intake were placed in the queue behind the applications currently in the existing inventory of sponsorship applications for parents and grandparents. This ensures a systematic and fair processing order, giving priority to those who have been waiting the longest.
2024 marks the fourth year in a row that the PGP has drawn from the 2020 pool of interested sponsors. While the program is set to grow in admissions allocations (rising from 32,000 this year to 34,000 in both 2025 and 2026), demand for the program has consistently outpaced available space. The environment created by these slim allocations, coupled with extended service standards have even led to prominent criticism of IRCC’s family reunification initiatives.
For example, after the 2023 PGP intake, there were still 108,000 interest to sponsor forms in IRCC’s backlog; meaning that the department could still spend the next three years (including 2024) working through the 2020 pool of sponsors, despite growing numbers of new sponsors from subsequent years.