Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C)

What Is an Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C) Application in Canada?

A Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C) application is a request under section 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) asking Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to exempt you from one or more requirements of the Act so that you can apply for permanent residence from inside Canada.

It is not a program with a points grid or a checklist. It is a discretionary remedy, described in Canadian immigration law as the safety net of the system. An officer reads your whole story and decides whether your circumstances justify an exception to rules that would otherwise force you to leave.

H&C applications usually rest on three pillars:

• Hardship: the difficulties or suffering you would face if you had to leave Canada, including risks to your safety, health, or well-being.
• Best interests of a child: the effect your removal would have on any child directly affected, including their emotional, social, and physical well-being.
• Establishment in Canada: the depth of your ties here, including family, community involvement, employment history, and length of residence.

Because H&C is exceptional, IRCC is explicit that the cost and inconvenience of returning to your home country to apply through normal channels are not, on their own, enough to justify an exemption. If you are already facing enforcement action, a detention review or an admissibility hearing, the timing of an H&C filing matters and should be planned with a licensed representative.

Who Is Eligible for Humanitarian and Compassionate Consideration?

To use the in-Canada H&C application, you must:

• Be a foreign national currently living in Canada.
• Need an exemption from one or more requirements of IRPA or its Regulations in order to apply for permanent residence from within Canada.
• Believe your personal circumstances justify that exemption on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
• Not be eligible to apply for permanent residence from inside Canada under an existing class, including Spouse or Common-Law Partner, Economic Class, Protected Person and Convention Refugee, or Temporary Resident Permit Holder.

That last point is important. If your partner is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and can sponsor you, spousal sponsorship is normally the correct route, not H&C, and you do not need legal status in Canada to be sponsored under the Spouse or Common-Law Partner in Canada class.

Who cannot use an H&C application

You may not apply on H&C grounds if you:

• Are a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident.
• Already have an H&C application on which no decision has been made. Only one H&C application may be under consideration at any time, and a second one filed while the first is pending will not be processed.
• Have an outstanding refugee claim. The claim must be finally decided, withdrawn, or abandoned first.
• Became a designated foreign national within the last five years. The Minister of Public Safety notifies people when this designation applies to them.

Two further restrictions apply:

• The twelve-month bar. If the Immigration and Refugee Board issued a final negative decision on your refugee claim, you generally must wait twelve months before filing an H&C application. The exceptions are narrow and specific: the best interests of a child directly affected, a risk to your life caused by inadequate health or medical care in the country you would return to, or a risk to your life or safety.
• Serious inadmissibility. People inadmissible on security grounds, for human or international rights violations, or for organized criminality cannot request H&C consideration at all. Other forms of inadmissibility can sometimes be addressed within an H&C submission, which is a separate question from whether the application itself is available to you.

If your refugee claim has already been refused, refugee appeals or a pre-removal risk assessment may be available before or instead of H&C.

Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C) Fees and Processing Times in 2026

Current fees

IRCC raised permanent residence fees on April 30, 2026. The current amounts for a humanitarian and compassionate application are:

• Processing fee, principal applicant: CAD 660
• Processing fee, accompanying spouse or common-law partner: CAD 660
• Processing fee, accompanying dependent child: CAD 180
• Right of Permanent Residence Fee (RPRF): CAD 600 for the principal applicant and for an accompanying spouse or partner
• Biometrics may also be required and is charged separately

A single applicant with no family members included therefore pays CAD 1,260 in total, assuming the RPRF is paid at approval. The RPRF is refundable if the application is withdrawn or refused. Every family member included in the application must have the correct fee paid, and an incomplete fee payment can stop the file from being processed at all.

Current processing times

This is where expectations need resetting. As of its July 2026 release, IRCC publishes a processing time of more than ten years for humanitarian and compassionate permanent residence applications, both inside and outside Quebec. That figure is the ceiling of IRCC's published scale rather than a precise forecast, and it reflects a large inventory measured against a small number of admission spaces.

The admission targets explain why. Under the 2026 to 2028 Immigration Levels Plan, the H&C and Other category is allocated 16,900 admissions across three years, with 6,900 planned for 2026 and notional targets of 5,000 in each of 2027 and 2028. That category also absorbs special public policy measures responding to global events, so the space available specifically for in-Canada H&C files is smaller still.

Anyone quoting you a reliable 24 to 36 month timeline for an H&C application in 2026 is working from outdated data. Plan on a long wait, and plan for how you will maintain status, work authorization, and health coverage during it. Applicants in Canada under temporary special measures, including people from Ukraine and Hong Kong, have in some cases been given ways to extend their stay legally while a permanent residence application is processed.

Recent policy changes worth knowing

IRCC rewrote its internal H&C program delivery instructions on June 25, 2026, updating guidance at every major decision point for in-Canada files, from intake through to the final permanent residence decision. Further instructions published on July 22, 2026 confirm that an H&C request made inside an in-Canada public policy application does not receive a separate H&C decision. If the public policy application is refused, the applicant is directed to file a standalone H&C application and pay the fee again. If your file touches a public policy stream, this changes how the request should be structured from the start.

What Factors Do IRCC Officers Consider?

H&C applications are assessed case by case. The factors that carry the most weight are:

Hardship on return

• Risks to personal safety, including return to an environment of violence, persecution, or discrimination.
• Economic hardship, including the loss of employment, income, or the ability to support dependants.
• Inadequate or inaccessible healthcare in the country of return.

Best interests of the child

Where a child is directly affected by the decision, their interests are a primary consideration. Officers look at the child's emotional, social, and physical well-being, the impact of separation from you or from the stability they have built in Canada, and any specific medical or educational needs.

Establishment in Canada

Length of residence, employment history, financial self-sufficiency, language ability, education completed here, volunteer work, and community and religious involvement.

Health considerations

Medical evidence matters most when the treatment you need is unavailable or substandard in the country of return. Officers expect medical reports and expert opinions, not assertions.

Family violence

Applicants who have experienced family violence can submit police reports, medical records, counsellor statements, and other evidence documenting both the history and the risk of returning to an abusive situation.

The Kanthasamy Test and How Officers Must Decide

The framework that governs modern H&C assessments comes from the Supreme Court of Canada's 2015 decision in Kanthasamy v. Canada. The Court held that section 25(1) exists to provide a flexible, equitable remedy that softens the rigidity of immigration law, and that officers must consider all of an applicant's personal circumstances together rather than applying a rigid checklist or treating "unusual and undeserved or disproportionate hardship" as a legal threshold to be passed.

In practice this means two things for your submission. First, factors that look weak in isolation can be persuasive when presented as a connected picture of a life built in Canada. Second, an officer who mechanically dismisses one factor at a time, or who treats the best interests of a child as a box to tick, may have made a reviewable error. Refusals are sometimes challenged on exactly this basis, and immigration appeals or judicial review may follow a negative decision.

How to Apply for Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C) Grounds Step by Step

01. Assess your situation. Confirm that no other immigration class is open to you and that none of the bars above apply. H&C should be the route you take because the alternatives are genuinely closed, not because it looks simpler.

02. Gather your evidence. Identity documents, proof of establishment, employment and tax records, school and medical records for children, country condition evidence, letters of support from family, employers, community organizations, and any medical or psychological reports.

03. Complete the correct forms. The core forms are the Generic Application Form for Canada (IMM 0008), the Supplementary Information: Humanitarian and Compassionate Considerations form (IMM 5283), and Schedule A: Background/Declaration (IMM 5669). IMM 5283 is where you set out, in detail, the exemptions you are requesting and the reasons behind them. The current requirements are set out in IRCC's Guide 5291.

04. Write the submission letter. This is the heart of the application. A properly prepared submission runs many pages, states each exemption sought, ties every claim to a specific piece of evidence, and explains why the humanitarian and compassionate factors in your case are compelling. It is the document an officer reads first and remembers.

05. Submit and pay. Apply online through the IRCC portal, pay the processing fees for yourself and every included family member, and provide biometrics if requested.

06. Respond to requests. IRCC may send an additional document request or a procedural fairness letter raising a concern. Deadlines here are short and missing one can end the application. Responding well often decides the outcome.

07. Receive a decision. H&C decisions are discretionary and, as noted above, currently take a very long time. You will be notified in writing.

Approval in Principle and the Two Stages of an H&C Decision

An H&C file is decided in two stages, and the difference matters.

Stage 1 is the assessment of the H&C grounds themselves. A positive Stage 1 decision is called approval in principle. It means the officer accepts that your circumstances justify the exemptions you asked for. It is not a grant of permanent residence.

Stage 2 is the final permanent residence decision, including medical, criminality, and security checks for you and your included family members. Only at the end of Stage 2 does status change.

Approval in principle can, however, unlock practical relief in the meantime, including eligibility to apply for a work permit in some circumstances. Treat it as a milestone, not a finish line.

Does an Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C) Application Stop Removal From Canada?

No, not automatically. Filing an H&C application does not create a statutory stay of a removal order, and a removal order can still be enforced while the application sits in the queue. Given the current processing times, this is one of the most consequential misunderstandings applicants have.

Relief from removal, where it is available, comes through separate avenues such as a deferral request to the Canada Border Services Agency or a stay motion in Federal Court, each with its own test and its own evidence. If you have already been removed and want to come back, that is a different application again, an authorization to return to Canada. If removal is a live risk in your case, get advice before you file, not after.

H&C Compared With a Refugee Claim and a PRRA

These three routes are often confused, and mixing them up costs applicants their eligibility.

A refugee claim, decided through refugee hearings at the Immigration and Refugee Board, asks whether you face persecution for a Convention reason or a risk to life or of cruel treatment. A pre-removal risk assessment asks a similar risk question at the point of removal. An H&C application asks something different: not whether you face a defined legal risk, but whether the humanitarian consequences of your removal justify an exception to the rules.

You cannot run an H&C application while a refugee claim is outstanding, and the twelve-month bar applies after a final negative Board decision unless a listed exception applies. Sequencing these correctly is a strategic decision, not an administrative one.

How Can I Prove My Establishment in Canada?

Establishment is where most applications are won or lost, because it is the factor most fully within your control to document.

• Length of stay: leases, utility bills, bank statements, and official correspondence showing continuous residence.
• Employment history: job letters, pay stubs, T4s, and tax returns showing stable work and financial self-sufficiency.
• Community involvement: letters from community organizations, places of worship, and volunteer coordinators describing what you actually do, not just that you attend.
• Education and skills: transcripts, certificates, and language course records completed in Canada.
• Family ties: evidence of family members in Canada, their status, and letters describing the relationship and the mutual support involved.
• Personal statement: a detailed first-person account of your integration into Canadian life and why leaving would cause the hardship you describe.

Volume is not the goal. An organized, indexed package where every claim is matched to a document is far stronger than a thick bundle an officer has to sort through.

Can H&C Applications Include Family Members?

Yes. As the principal applicant you can include your spouse or common-law partner and your dependent children, whether they are in Canada with you or abroad.

Three points to keep in mind. The correct fee must be paid for each included family member. Each family member is assessed for admissibility at Stage 2, so an inadmissibility affecting one person can affect the outcome. And where a designated foreign national restriction applies to someone in the family, it affects what can be requested for them.

Including family members can strengthen a case by putting family unity at the centre of it, but only if their circumstances are documented as carefully as your own.

Limits on Humanitarian and Compassionate Consideration

• Serious inadmissibility: security grounds, human or international rights violations, and organized criminality bar H&C consideration outright.
• One application at a time: a second H&C application will not be examined while another is pending.
• The twelve-month bar: applies after a final negative refugee decision, subject to the narrow exceptions above.
• No substitute for other classes: H&C cannot be used to bypass a program you are eligible for, and it cannot be used to overcome Express Entry requirements or Ministerial Instructions.
• Discretion runs both ways: a strong case can still be refused, because there is no entitlement to a positive H&C decision.

Are you worried about your immigration status in Canada and wondering whether an H&C application is realistically your best option? Our licensed consultants will assess your situation honestly, tell you if a stronger route exists, and prepare the submission that gives your case its best chance.

Why Work with SEP Immigration?

Our licensed consultants handle the entire process, from evidence strategy and submission drafting to responding to procedural fairness letters and additional document requests. We help you avoid the mistakes that quietly sink H&C files and present your circumstances the way an officer needs to read them.