Reporting obligations for post-secondary designated learning institutions

On this page

• Your obligations as a DLI
• How we verify DLI compliance
• What happens if you don’t meet your obligations

Your obligations as a DLI

Letter of acceptance verification

You must confirm whether a student has been accepted in the program of study indicated on their study permit application by verifying the letter of acceptance.

You must provide this information within 10 days of receiving a request from IRCC.

Find out more about the letter of acceptance verification process.

Student compliance reporting

You’re required to report on the enrollment status of each student who has been accepted by submitting a student compliance report. This means that

• you must submit the report within 60 days of receiving a compliance reporting request
• you must provide correction or additions to the information shown in the student compliance report within 10 days of receiving any additional compliance requests

Find out more about student compliance reporting.

Answering our questions

You’re also required to answer any questions we may have and to provide further information about students, their application or study permits.

How we verify DLI compliance

We can verify your compliance at any point if

• you’re randomly selected
• we believe you’re not compliant
• you were found to be non-compliant in the past
• we have reason to suspect that a letter of acceptance bearing your DLI’s name was improperly issued

We’ll contact you if we need to verify your compliance.

What happens if you don’t meet your obligations

During a compliance verification, we’ll send you a Notice of Preliminary Findings that explains your violation(s) and the possible consequences you could face.

You have 30 days from the date you received the notice to write back to us before we make a final decision.

In some cases, you may wish to write back and explain why you were not able to meet your obligations or that you were, in fact, compliant. Before we make a final decision, you should send us any information and evidence that shows, for example

• that you acted in good faith
• that you made all reasonable efforts to comply with the obligations

You can ask for an extension by writing back to us if you need more time. We may grant an extension of a maximum of 30 days if you have demonstrated that exceptional circumstances have prevented you from making your submissions on time.

Final decision

Unless the Notice of Preliminary Findings has been cancelled, we’ll review the entire case after the 30-day period and issue a Notice of Final Decision.

If we find you non-compliant, the notice will include

• the DLI name
• which condition(s) you violated
• the reason(s) for finding you non-compliant
• how long you will stay on the suspension list , if applicable

Consequences

If we find you non-compliant,

• you may be issued a warning (which may be used in any future DLI compliance verifications) or
• you may be issued a suspension of up to 12 months and placed on a public IRCC suspension list
  • During this period
    • we won’t process any new study permit applications to your school
    • any fees and new study permit applications will be returned to the clients