The federal government has paused a program that lets Canadian citizens and permanent residents sponsor their parents and grandparents to come live in Canada. As of July 15, 2026, no new applications are being accepted.

The program is called the Parents and Grandparents Program, and it is run by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). The department's official sponsorship page confirms the pause took effect July 15, and IRCC says it will not accept new applications until further notice.

The government used a tool called a Ministerial Instruction to make the change. This lets the immigration minister set rules for specific programs quickly, without going through Parliament. An IRCC notice published July 15, 2026, titled "Canada takes steps to responsibly manage the Parents and Grandparents Program," describes the move.

Taous Ait, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab, said the decision is part of broader efforts to restore balance across immigration programs and maintain public confidence. The pause fits into the government's wider plan to lower immigration numbers across several programs.

The government's 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan cut the number of parents and grandparents allowed in through this program to 15,000 per year for each of the three years. The previous plan had set the 2025 target at 21,500. Even with the pause on new applications, IRCC will continue processing up to 15,000 people in 2025 who have already applied.

The reason behind the pause is a large backlog. In 2020, IRCC set up a system where people could submit an expression of interest — a way of saying they want to sponsor a parent or grandparent — and IRCC would select people from that group to invite to apply. Think of it like a waiting list at a restaurant: people put their names down, and the staff call them when a table opens up. More than 200,000 people signed up in 2020.

As of September 2025, about 54,000 people from that original 2020 group were still waiting. On top of that, as of July 2026, 60,500 full applications were already being processed.

With only 15,000 spots processed per year, clearing the 54,000 people still in the waiting list would take about three and a half years — and that is if no new applications are added.

The government had pointed in a different direction just a year earlier. On July 16, 2025, IRCC published a notice titled "Parents and Grandparents Program intake opens in late July," saying the department was preparing to accept new submissions. That intake apparently went ahead, but the current pause reverses that move.

NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan noted that the program has been closed to new applicants since 2020 and criticized the government for suspending new intakes once again. Her criticism points to a tension: the program has mostly been closed for years, even as governments have occasionally signalled it would reopen.

The broader context here is the government's effort to manage how many people come to Canada against limits on processing capacity, settlement services, and public pressure. The parents and grandparents program has been a constant pressure point because bringing families together carries strong emotional and political weight, especially in communities where multiple generations living together is an expectation. Cutting targets and pausing intake is a politically costly step, which suggests the government's assessment of its processing capacity has won out over those considerations.

For people affected, the result is straightforward: no new sponsors can join the waiting list, and the 54,000 people already in it still do not know when their turn will come. Many have been waiting since 2020 or earlier. With the 15,000-per-year cap and no new applications being accepted, that list will shrink slowly, and nobody new can get in line.

The use of a Ministerial Instruction rather than a change to law is consistent with how IRCC has handled this program in the past. Ministerial Instructions let the department act quickly without changing federal regulations, though a parliamentary committee — the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration — can review them. Whether this pause will face that kind of scrutiny is an open question.