The Federal Court has set aside IRCC’s refusal to reconsider a rejected Parents and Grandparents Program application. In Parra v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 1300, Justice Thorne found the PGP reconsideration decision unreasonable after the applicant promptly provided the missing forms with her reconsideration request.
Case details and application history
The decision, released in Toronto on October 23, 2026, concerns an application to sponsor the applicant’s parents under the 2024 Parents and Grandparents Program (PGP) cycle. The case was heard under Court file IMM-8041-25 by Justice Darren R. Thorne.
IRCC had found the sponsorship application incomplete because it did not receive forms IMM5768, IMM1344 and IMM008, which were required as proof of the relationship between the applicant and her parents.
IRCC first requested one of the forms on November 29, 2024 and gave the applicant 30 days to respond. Her representative sent the form on December 4, but used an incorrect IRCC email address. IRCC again advised on January 13, 2025 that the application did not meet processing requirements and requested the missing forms within 30 days. The representative sent the required forms on January 22, again to an incorrect email address.
IRCC rejected the application as incomplete on February 28, 2025. On March 3, the applicant’s consultant requested reconsideration and said the documents had been sent previously. The reconsideration request included the documents, but IRCC declined to reconsider on March 11.
Arguments before the Federal Court
The applicant argued that the reconsideration refusal did not address the consequences of the decision or her good-faith and timely efforts to comply with IRCC’s requests. She submitted that the PGP is limited and competitive and that she had waited four years to apply.
The Minister responded that applicants bear the responsibility for submitting complete applications. The Minister noted that IRCC followed up twice and argued that IRCC was not responsible for the representative’s use of incorrect email addresses.
Why the reconsideration decision was unreasonable
Justice Thorne found two defects in IRCC’s reconsideration decision. First, the Court relied on the established jurisprudence cited in Naderika v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), which says that, although an immigration officer is not obliged to reconsider a permanent residence application, fairness and common sense may require reconsideration when new evidence confirming a material fact is presented within days of a negative decision on a long-outstanding application.
The Court found that this framework applied because the applicant had contacted IRCC within three days of the rejection. Her correspondence confirmed that she had made genuine and timely efforts to provide the requested information, even though the forms had been sent to the wrong email addresses.
The Court also distinguished Ginzburg v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), a case relied on by the Minister. Unlike the applicant in Ginzburg, the applicant in this matter ultimately sent the required information with her reconsideration request.
Second, Justice Thorne found that IRCC did not adequately explain why reconsideration was not warranted despite the applicant’s genuine and timely efforts. The reasons did not provide the justification, intelligibility and transparency required for the Court to understand the outcome.
Application granted and matter returned to IRCC
The Federal Court granted judicial review, set aside the reconsideration decision and returned the matter to IRCC for redetermination by a different officer. The Court did not order approval of the underlying PGP sponsorship application.
No question of general importance was certified. The decision addresses the particular record before the Court and does not itself create a general requirement for IRCC to reconsider every incomplete application.
Source: Federal Court Decisions