CIMM – Permanent Resident Processing Times for Quebec Applicants – December 05, 2023
Key Facts And Figures
- On November 1, 2023, Quebec announced that it would maintain its immigration levels at 50,000 regular admissions per year, plus additional admissions of Quebec Business clients who applied before 2023 and ongoing admissions of people selected under the "Quebec Graduates" stream of the Programme de l'expérience québécoise (PEQ) for the years 2024 and 2025.
- Processing times for applications for permanent residence can be affected by many factors, including space available in the Levels Plan. Specifically for Quebec destined cases, the targets established by the Ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l'Intégration (MIFI) have significant influence on IRCC’s published processing times. This is because many of Quebec's admissions targets are not high enough to support intake demand and maintain or reduce inventory levels. As a result many Quebec destined clients wait in a growing queue, as IRCC must limit production in order to not exceed Quebec’s targets.
Key Messages
- As established in the Canada-Quebec Accord, Quebec sets its own immigration levels plan, which the Government of Canada takes into account for the overall Immigration Levels plan.
- Processing times for applications for permanent residence are closely linked to available levels space and intake levels. Specifically for Quebec cases, targets established by the MIFI greatly influence the processing time experienced by clients. If there are more applications in inventory than what can be processed within MIFI’s targets, clients will experience longer processing times, as IRCC aims for admissions to be within ranges established by Quebec.
- In some cases, there is increasing alignment between admissions spaces and intake, leading to processing time improvements. For example, by the end of October 2023, the processing times for Quebec Skilled Workers applications was 13 months, which is approaching the Department’s service standard of 11 months. Compared to the same period last year, this is a decrease of nine months, demonstrating that the Department and province are working together towards achieving the service standard.
- In other cases, including for Family Class clients (both spouses, partners and children and parents and grandparents), Protected Persons in Canada and Humanitarian and Compassionate cases, inventories and new intake exceed available Levels spaces, resulting in longer processing times than for clients destined to the rest of Canada. For example, the current published processing time on the IRCC website is 25-33 months for spouses, partners and children destined to Quebec (depending on whether clients are in-Canada or Overseas), compared to 10-13 months for clients destined to the rest of Canada.
Supplementary Information
- Processing times for Quebec-destined applications prior to the pandemic were already long due to a disparity between Quebec-destined intake and the levels space MIFI provides to IRCC to finalize applications.