Quebec won’t accept some family reunification applications until 2026

Quebec will not accept new sponsorship applications from residents who want to bring their spouses, common-law partners or adult children until next year.

Quebec will not accept new sponsorship applications from residents who want to bring their spouses, common-law partners or adult children into the province until next year.

The Immigration Ministry said in a news release that it has reached its cap for family reunification sponsorship.

Families of those immigrants will have to wait until June 25, 2026 to apply.

Immigration lawyer Maxime Lapointe said he is not surprised by the announcement and saw it coming after the government announced new rules for family reunification in June 2024.

Last year, Quebec said it would only process 13,000 family applications from immigrants seeking to reunite with relatives over the two-year period from June 2024 to 2026, after approving more than 16,500 in 2022 and more than 10,000 in the first six months of 2023.

“We knew the quota would be reached, I figured it would take about a year,” said Lapointe. “Now this will create a huge backlog and processing delays will get even longer.”

Quebec is the province with the longest processing time to sponsor a spouse or partner living outside the country at 37 months. In other Canadian provinces, the wait time is about 11 months.

The government is also preparing to drop its permanent immigration targets, which could be as low as 25,000 per year.

If that happens, Lapointe said delays could go up to between seven and 10 years.

Lapointe was suing Quebec’s immigration minister in 2024 over “unacceptable delays” in the family reunification file, but the lawsuit was dropped after his client gained permanent residency.

“Quebec said it doesn’t have the welcoming capacity, but if there’s one category that won’t create pressure on housing it’s family reunification,” said Lapointe. “It makes no sense that the same sponsorship cases takes three times as long to process in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada.”

The government is still accepting applications for other classes of family members, like children under 18.

According to the lawyer, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) is playing politics. The provincial government has asked Ottawa for full immigration powers to impose French-language requirements, among others.

When it comes to family reunification, those requirements don’t apply.

“In real life, the government wants 50,000 immigrants per year and there are categories over which Quebec has the power of selection like economic immigrants, qualified workers and business people,” Lapointe explained. “Then there are categories where Quebec does not have the power to impose conditions, like French, including family reunification, humanitarian immigration and refugees.”

He added that Quebec wants to maintain as much control as it can, and never increased its quotas despite an increase in demand.

“Quebec knew the demand was higher than its offer, and it reduced the offer once again,” said Lapointe.

With an election looming and the Parti Québécois gaining popularity, Lapointe said the CAQ has to make good on its 2018 election promises to reduce immigration.

With files from The Canadian Press