Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has quietly posted its weekly processing-time update for temporary-resident applications, giving employers, foreign workers and international students a fresh snapshot of how long it now takes to secure a Canadian visa. The data—current to July 22—showed modest but meaningful movement across several key categories. In-Canada work-permit extensions improved for a second consecutive week, dropping to 122 days and edging closer to IRCC’s 120-day service standard. Outside Canada, however, processing for applicants in Pakistan lengthened by three weeks (to ten) and in the Philippines by one week (to seven). Employers that rely on Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program or the Global Skills Strategy will want to factor those longer lead times into fall recruitment plans, immigration lawyers say. Study-permit timelines remained flat at five to seven weeks for the main source countries listed, a sign that IRCC’s high-season measures are holding—good news for post-secondary institutions counting on September arrivals. Visitor-visa (TRV) figures painted a mixed picture: in-Canada filings fell five days to 29, and U.S.-based applicants now wait just 27 days, but India, Pakistan and Nigeria all saw slight increases. Super-visa estimates, important for expatriates who wish to bring parents and grandparents for extended stays, shortened by up to five days for most countries but rose to 194 days for Pakistan. IRCC reminds applicants that the published numbers represent the time it took to finalize 80 percent of recent files; complex cases can take longer, while fully documented, low-risk cases can move faster. Still, multinational employers and mobility managers track the weekly release closely because it is one of the few near-real-time indicators of capacity inside Canada’s immigration system. The next update is expected around July 29. Until then, human-resources teams are being advised to build extra buffer time into mobilization schedules—particularly when sourcing talent from South Asia—and to consider bridging open work permits for employees already in Canada whose renewals are pending.
Source: CIC News
