Update on 2025 Parents and Grandparents Program
Ottawa, March 7, 2025—Family reunification is an important part of Canada’s immigration system, helping Canadian citizens and permanent residents sponsor their loved ones to live and work alongside them in Canada. Through the Parents and Grandparents (PGP) Program, the government is committed to reuniting as many families as possible.
This year, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) intends to accept up to 10,000 complete applications for sponsorship under the PGP Program.
Given there remains a number of interest to sponsor forms in the pool from 2020, IRCC plans to send invitations to apply to randomly selected potential sponsors from that pool instead of accepting new forms. This is the same approach taken for the intakes conducted from 2020 to 2024.
As of February 5, 2025, processing times for PGP Program applications were approximately 24 months for those destined outside Quebec. They are 48 months for Quebec-destined applicants due to the province’s more limited family class admission targets.
To minimize wait times for clients, IRCC strives to strike a balance between the number of PGP Program applications received with the number of PGP Program spaces available through the Immigration Levels Plan in future years. Changes to the levels plan, such as the overall reductions to our immigration targets in the 2025–2027 Immigration Levels Plan, require IRCC to recalibrate the number of new applications that are accepted for processing.
IRCC understands this approach will have an impact on the families who have not had an opportunity to submit an interest to sponsor form. For those interested in reuniting with their parents and grandparents for extended periods of time, the super visa remains available. This allows parents and grandparents to visit their children or grandchildren for 5 years at a time and provides multiple entries to Canada for up to 10 years. IRCC recently made the super visa more accessible by implementing a change to the health insurance requirement.
More details about the 2025 PGP Program intake will be made available in the coming months, including information about when the invitations to apply will be sent.
