Canada Pushes Indian Study-Permit Processing to Seven Weeks; Visitor Visas Improve Slightly

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) mid-October service-standards update—reported on 21 October—contains a mixed bag for Indian applicants. Study-permit processing from outside Canada has stretched to an estimated seven weeks, up from six earlier this month. Work-permit timelines are unchanged at 11 weeks, while visitor-visa decisions have inched forward, falling from 30 days to 29. Super-visa (parent and grand-parent) requests now take 77 days, three days longer than September. The one-week slippage on study permits is small in isolation but significant because India supplies roughly 40 per cent of Canada’s international-student cohort. Education agents fear that creeping delays could push January-intake arrivals into February, forcing universities to grant late-registration waivers or defer students to May. Institutions with large Indian enrolments are already issuing conditional attendance letters to help students clear border checks if permits land after the official start date. Employers using Canada’s Global Talent Stream remain insulated—the GTS still meets its two-week target—but conventional employer-specific work permits continue to hover at 11 weeks. HR teams should build at least an extra month into mobilisation schedules for 2027 project launches, particularly for intra-company transferees moving from India headquarters to Canadian subsidiaries. On the tourism side, the drop to 29 days is welcome news for winter-holiday traffic. Travel agencies in Delhi and Mumbai report a “noticeable uptick” in Christmas bookings to Vancouver and Toronto, banking on a four-week visa turnaround. However, agents caution families to submit biometrics quickly; any delay resets the processing clock. IRCC emphasises that figures are rolling averages, not guarantees. Applicants facing urgent travel should still use premium processing—where available—or request a priority tag through their Member of Parliament, although success is never assured.