If you’ve spent the last few years dreaming about finally having your parents or grandparents settled here with you permanently, here are some changes in 2026 that you need to know. It looks very different from what you might have planned around. The rules have shifted, the numbers have shrunk, and the path that was open, is for now closed to new applicants. But it’s not all bad news. There is still a workable route around this, and if you understand how the pieces fit together, you can still bring your family here sooner rather than later. Let’s walk through it together.
PGP is paused for new applicants in 2026
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is not accepting any new “interest to sponsor” forms this year, and it is not issuing new invitations to apply under the Parents and Grandparents Program. If you weren’t already in the system, there is no way in this year.
It helps to understand why this happened, because it isn’t arbitrary:
• The waitlist was never going to keep up. Every year, far more people want to sponsor a parent or grandparent than there are spots available under Canada’s immigration targets.
• The targets themselves got smaller. The 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan cut annual PGP admissions by more than half — down to 15,000 a year, from a previously planned 34,000.
• IRCC is trying to dig out from under the backlog first. Rather than adding new names to an already overwhelmed queue, the department is putting its energy into processing the people who are already waiting.
It’s also worth knowing that the interest-to-sponsor pool itself has been closed since the randomized lottery in 2020, and remains closed. The most recent invitations — 17,860 of them issued in 2025 — were drawn strictly from that same 2020 pool. If your name wasn’t already in it, there is currently no route to permanent residency sponsorship.
So what can you do now?
The Super Visa was originally meant as a nice-to-have alternative for visiting family. Because PR sponsorship has become so restricted, it’s now doing a lot of the heavy lifting as the main way families reunite. The numbers reflect the shift now since it launched in 2011, more than 267,000 Super Visas have been issued. Approvals used to sit around 17,000 a year before the pandemic by 2023, that number had climbed past 73,000.
A couple of things worth knowing about it:
• It’s only for parents and grandparents: You can’t bring siblings, cousins, or other extended family through this route.
• It offers a substantial amount of time: up to five years per visit, within a visa that’s valid for ten years total.
And recently, IRCC made two changes that make it considerably easier to qualify for.
Change 1: The income rules finally have some breathing room (as of March 31, 2026)
Previously, the rule was rigid: you had to prove your income met the Low-Income Cut-Off (LICO) for the one specific tax year right before you applied. If that year happened to be a rough one — a layoff, a parental leave, starting a new business you were simply out of luck, even if every other year looked fine.
Now you get some flexibility:
1. A two-year window. You can qualify using either of the two tax years before you apply. So if 2024 was a lean year but 2025 bounced back, your 2025 income on its own can carry your application.
2. A top-up from the visiting parent or grandparent. If your income reaches at least 75% of the required threshold, you’re allowed to count some of your parent’s or grandparent’s own income toward the remaining 25%.
Change 2: affordable foreign insurance (as of January 28, 2025)
Super Visa applicants have always needed private medical insurance, since they’re not eligible for OHIP. In the past, that meant paying whatever Canadian insurers charged — often a significant expense. Now, families can buy that insurance from a foreign provider instead, as long as the insurer is authorized by Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) and the policy is issued through their Canadian operations. For a lot of families, this alone has meaningfully brought costs down.
Must Read : Temporary Travel to Canada
Now what does this mean for you?
A few things are worth flagging if you’re sponsoring from Ontario:
Your processing times are better than you’d think — especially compared to Quebec. As of June 2026, a PGP permanent residency application from a sponsor living outside Quebec (which includes all of Ontario) is taking about 32 months. Inside Quebec, it’s running a much longer 67 months, largely because Quebec manages its own separate intake caps.
Your spouse can co-sign — but nobody else can. If your income alone doesn’t clear the bar for either PGP or the Super Visa, your spouse or common-law partner can combine their income with yours on the sponsorship. Siblings and other relatives, though, are not allowed to co-sign no matter how willing they are to help.
The unpaid care your parents provide is worth more than people realize. There’s a narrative out there that sponsoring older relatives is a drain on the system. The research doesn’t back that up. Visiting grandparents across Canada quietly take on an enormous amount of unpaid work — childcare, cooking, running the household and that labour is estimated to save the Canadian care economy somewhere between $97.1 and $112.7 billion a year. For Ontario families in particular, that support often makes the difference in a parent frequently an immigrant woman who arrived here as an adult and faces some of the steepest wage gaps being able to go back to work full-time or pursue further education. This isn’t a side benefit. For a lot of households, it’s the thing that makes everything else possible.
If reuniting with your family is the goal this year, here is what you can do and how your lawyer can help!
1. Consult a lawyer, see what requirements are needed for your specific case.
2. Start the Super Visa process. Applying for one doesn’t touch or delay any PR application you may have pending or hope to submit down the road. Think of it as the bridge that gets your family here while the permanent route is closed.
3. Use the two-year window to your advantage. If your 2024 income was weak but 2025 was strong, lean on the 2025 Notice of Assessment by itself, you don’t need both years to look good anymore.
- If scared that your income may not be strong enough for the application, consult with your lawyer before applying!
4. Don’t assume Canadian insurance is your only option. Check OSFI’s registry for approved foreign insurers before you buy. It’s a quick search that can save real money. Explore your options!
5. Keep your tax history clean going forward. When PGP eventually reopens, you’ll need three consecutive years meeting LICO + 30%.
The permanent route being paused can be disappointing if you’ve been counting on it. But the Super Visa, especially with these newer, more forgiving rules, is a real and workable way to have your parents or grandparents here with you far sooner than a PR application would allow — and for many families, that’s what matters most right now. Contact us for a consultation.
https://ircc.canada.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=820&top=
https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/3648
