Canadian citizens and permanent residents are able to sponsor their parents and grandparents to immigrate to Canada. If approved under this program, a parent or grandparent will be granted Canadian permanent residence and may eventually be able to apply for Canadian citizenship.
In order to be eligible for the PGP in the past, sponsors must have met the following criteria:
- Have completed an Interest to Sponsor form on IRCC’s website between October 13, 2020 (12:00 PM EDT) and November 3, 2020 (12:00 PM EST).
- Be a Canadian citizen, permanent resident of Canada, or a registered Indian under the Canadian Indian Act
- Be 18 years of age or older
- Be residing in Canada (potential applicants will need to provide a proof of status during the Interest to Sponsor phase)
- Exceed the minimum necessary income level for this program (if married or in a common-law relationship, the income of both the sponsor and spouse can be included) and provide proof of income to IRCC
- Sign an undertaking to financially support the sponsored for 20 years (starting when they become permanent residents); and to repay any social assistance benefits paid to the sponsored family members (if applicable) for a period of 20 years.
- If the sponsor resides in Quebec, an additional “undertaking” must be signed with the province of Quebec.
IRCC has not posted details on the 2023 PGP. In previous years, IRCC has utilized a lottery system to randomly select which interested sponsors would receive an Invitation to Apply (ITA) through the PGP.
All ITAs for the PGP since 2020 has been given to applicants who expressed interest to sponsor through the PGP between October and November 2020. The last PGP lottery was in October of 2022. At the time of the 2022 lottery, there were still approximately 155,000 potential sponsors remaining in the pool.
