Relative Sponsorship Canada

Relative sponsorship is the narrowest pathway in Canada's family class. You can only sponsor a relative to Canada in two situations: when that relative is an orphaned child under 18 who is closely related to you, or when you have no other family in Canada and no other relative you could sponsor instead.

Most people who search for this pathway do not qualify, and it is better to know that before you pay a single fee. This page explains both situations in plain terms, what the government expects from you financially, and what your options are if this route is closed to you.

The rules on this page follow IRCC's Guide 5196: Sponsorship of adopted children and other relatives, which is the official guide for this category. It is a different guide, with different rules, from the one used for spouses and children.

Who Can You Sponsor Under Relative Sponsorship?

Relative sponsorship covers family members who fall outside the usual categories. If you are trying to bring your husband, wife or partner, that is spousal sponsorship and it has its own rules. If you are bringing your son or daughter, that is dependent child sponsorship. Parents and grandparents go through the Parents and Grandparents Program, not this one.

What remains is a short list, and IRCC applies it strictly.

Sponsoring an Orphaned Sibling, Niece, Nephew or Grandchild

You can sponsor your brother, sister, nephew, niece or grandchild if all of the following are true on the day you apply:

• Both of their parents have died. A child with one surviving parent does not qualify, even if that parent cannot care for them.
• They are under 18 years old.
• They are not married and not in a common-law relationship.

If the child has a spouse, partner or children of their own, they fall outside this category entirely.

This is the more straightforward of the two routes, but it is also the one where documentation matters most. You will need to prove the deaths of both parents and your own relationship to the child, and IRCC will expect that evidence to be consistent across every document you submit.

The Lonely Canadian Rule: Sponsoring One Relative of Any Age

The second route is often called the lonely Canadian rule or the last remaining relative rule. It allows you to sponsor one relative of any age and any relationship, but only if you have nobody else.

To use it, you must have none of the following:

• a spouse, common-law partner or conjugal partner
• a child
• a parent
• a brother or sister
• a grandparent
• an aunt or uncle
• a niece or nephew

That absence has to be complete in two directions. You cannot have any of these relatives who is a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident or a person registered under the Indian Act, and you cannot have any of these relatives whose permanent residence application you would be able to sponsor.

This is where most applications fail before they begin. Having one living aunt overseas whom you could sponsor is enough to close this door, even if you have never met her. The list above is complete, not a set of examples, and IRCC checks it carefully.

Can You Sponsor a Brother, Sister, Aunt, Uncle or Cousin?

In ordinary circumstances, no. An adult sibling, an aunt, an uncle or a cousin is not a member of the family class on their own. There is no general category that lets a Canadian bring an adult brother or a cousin to Canada as a permanent resident.

The only exception is the lonely Canadian rule above. If you genuinely have no other relatives, then yes, your adult brother or your cousin can be that one relative. If you have any of the relatives listed above, the answer is no, and no amount of documentation changes that.

If your relative wants to come to Canada and this route is closed, the honest answer is usually that they should look at an economic pathway rather than family sponsorship. We cover those options further down this page.

Sponsor Eligibility Requirements in Canada

Professional hands reviewing immigration documents and an abstract family tree on an oak desk with a glass maple leaf.

Separate from the question of who you can sponsor is the question of whether you qualify as a sponsor. To sponsor a relative you must:

• be at least 18 years old
• be a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, or a person registered under the Indian Act
• live in Canada
• sign an undertaking promising to provide for the person's basic needs
• sign a sponsorship agreement with the person you are sponsoring
• meet the minimum necessary income and provide documents covering the past 12 months

The third point catches people out. Under spousal sponsorship, a Canadian citizen living abroad can sponsor if they show they intend to return to Canada. That flexibility does not exist here. For relative sponsorship, Guide 5196 requires you to be living in Canada when you apply. Permanent residents living outside Canada cannot sponsor at all.

Minimum Necessary Income (MNI) and LICO Requirements

You must meet the minimum necessary income, known as the MNI, for every relative sponsorship application. This is one of the biggest differences between this category and spousal sponsorship, where most sponsors face no income test at all.

The MNI is set by the Low Income Cut-Off, or LICO, published each year by the federal government. For this category the threshold is the LICO itself, not LICO plus 30 percent. The higher figure applies to parents, grandparents and the super visa, not here.

Figures as published by IRCC in Guide 5196, current as of April 2026. These amounts are updated annually and residents of Quebec are assessed under a separate provincial scale.

Your income is assessed as of the date you sign the sponsorship application. IRCC can also reassess it later if new information suggests you no longer meet the threshold, which means a job loss during processing can affect an application that was approved on paper.

How to Calculate Your Family Size for LICO

Family size is not the number of people in your household. It is a specific calculation, and getting it wrong is the most common reason sponsors think they qualify when they do not. Count all of the following:

1. Yourself
2. Your spouse or common-law partner
3. Your dependent children, including children you do not have custody of and do not support
4. The relative you are sponsoring, plus every one of their family members, whether or not they are coming to Canada
5. Everyone still covered by a sponsorship undertaking you signed or co-signed in the past
6. Everyone covered by any still valid undertaking signed or co-signed by your co-signer

A single sponsor bringing one adult relative who has a spouse and two children is looking at a family size of five, not two.

Using a Co-Signer to Meet the Income Requirement

If your income falls short, only your spouse or common-law partner can co-sign. A co-signer takes on the same legal responsibility you do and is equally liable if the undertaking is not honoured.

Assets, expected future earnings and financial help from other family members are not counted. A wealthy sibling offering to support the application does not raise your income figure.

What the Sponsorship Undertaking Means and How Long It Lasts

For relative sponsorship, the undertaking lasts 10 years from the day your relative becomes a permanent resident. For a dependent child aged 22 or over, it is three years.

During that time you are responsible for their basic needs: food, clothing, shelter, utilities, fuel, household supplies, personal requirements, and health care that public insurance does not cover, such as dental and vision care.

The undertaking is unconditional. It survives divorce, separation, a breakdown in the relationship, your relative becoming a Canadian citizen, a move to another province, and a decline in your own finances. If your relative receives social assistance while the undertaking is in force, you are in default, you must repay it, and you cannot sponsor anyone else until you do.

Ten years is a long commitment for a relationship that may be distant. It is worth thinking about seriously before you apply.

Who Cannot Sponsor a Relative to Canada

You are not eligible to sponsor if you:

• receive social assistance for a reason other than a disability
• are in default of a previous undertaking, an immigration loan, a performance bond, or court-ordered support payments
• are an undischarged bankrupt
• were convicted of a sexual offence, a violent criminal offence, or an offence against a relative causing bodily harm, or an attempt or threat to commit one
• are under a removal order
• are detained in a penitentiary, jail, reformatory or prison

Processing can also be suspended while certain proceedings are pending, including a charge for an offence punishable by 10 years or more, an inadmissibility report against you, an application to revoke your citizenship, or an appeal of the loss of your permanent resident status.

If you apply while in default, the application is refused and the sponsorship fee is not refunded.

How to Apply for Relative Sponsorship: Step by Step

Applications must be submitted online. Paper applications have not been accepted since September 2022, apart from approved accessibility accommodations.

Two applications move together: your sponsorship application and your relative's permanent residence application. Both are submitted at the same time, and you need a separate application for each person you sponsor. Two orphaned brothers means two complete applications.

You complete and sign:

• Application to Sponsor, Sponsorship Agreement and Undertaking (IMM 1344)
• Financial Evaluation (IMM 1283)
• Document Checklist (IMM 5287)
• Medical Condition Statement (IMM 0133)
• Statutory Declaration of Common-Law Union (IMM 5409), if it applies
• Use of a Representative (IMM 5476), if you are working with an authorized representative

Your relative completes inside the Permanent Residence Portal:

• Generic Application Form for Canada (IMM 0008)
• Schedule A, Background/Declaration (IMM 5669)
• Additional Family Information (IMM 5406)

You send your completed forms to your relative, who uploads them and electronically signs the entire application, including forms for any accompanying family members.

Documents Required for Relative Sponsorship

Alongside the forms, expect to provide:

• Police certificates from every country where anyone aged 18 or over spent six or more consecutive months since turning 18
• Translations of any document not in English or French, with an affidavit if the translator is not certified in Canada. Applicants and their family members cannot translate their own documents
• A medical exam completed by an IRCC panel physician. Results are valid for 12 months, and an expired exam means repeating it
• Biometrics, unless the person is a Canadian citizen or existing permanent resident, who are exempt
• Proof of relationship, including death certificates for both parents in orphaned relative cases

Relative Sponsorship Fees and Costs

The right of permanent residence fee does not apply to an orphaned brother, sister, niece, nephew or grandchild. If you live in Quebec, you will also pay a separate provincial fee directly to MIFI.

Relative Sponsorship Processing Time

There is no published service standard for this category, and any website quoting you a fixed number for relative sponsorship is quoting the wrong figure.

The well-known 12 month service standard applies only to overseas spouses, partners and dependent children. IRCC processes the family class in a set order of operational priority: spouses, partners and dependent children first, then orphaned family members, then other relatives, then parents and grandparents. Relative sponsorship sits in the second half of that queue, which in practice means longer and less predictable timelines than a spousal file.

Check the current estimate using IRCC's processing times tool, and treat it as an estimate rather than a promise. Medical, security or criminality issues, and any doubt about the relationship itself, extend it further.

Sponsoring a Relative if You Live in Quebec

Quebec assesses sponsors under its own rules, and the process runs in two stages.

You submit your application to IRCC first. If you meet the federal requirements, IRCC sends you instructions to download Quebec's undertaking kit, which you complete and submit to MIFI along with a copy of that letter. IRCC cannot decide your application until Quebec has decided on your undertaking.

Quebec sets its own income scale and its own undertaking length, so the federal figures on this page do not apply to you. Quebec may also find you ineligible on grounds of its own, including unpaid support payments ordered by a court in the five years before you applied.

What Happens if Your Relative Sponsorship Is Refused

Whether you have a right of appeal depends on a box you tick on the IMM 1344, and most sponsors tick it without understanding what it does.

• If you choose to withdraw should you fail to meet the sponsorship requirements, processing stops. All fees except the sponsorship fee are refunded, and you have no right of appeal.
• If you choose to proceed, your relative's permanent residence application continues to be assessed. If it is refused, you can appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division.

You also have a right of appeal if you meet the sponsorship requirements but your relative is refused on eligibility or admissibility grounds.

There is no appeal where the refusal is based on security grounds, human or international rights violations, serious or organized criminality, or misrepresentation, or where you withdrew the sponsorship yourself.

If you have received a refusal, our team can review the decision and We handle sponsorship appeals regularly and the first question is always whether the right of appeal exists at all.

Alternatives to Relative Sponsorship in Canada

If this pathway is closed to you, your relative may still have a route to Canada. It just will not run through you.

Economic immigration is usually the strongest option. If your relative has skilled work experience, education and language ability, Express Entry may be a far more realistic path than any family category. Several provincial nominee programs also award points for having a relative settled in the province, so your presence in Canada can help their application even when you cannot sponsor them.

For parents and grandparents, the super visa allows long visits of several years at a time, and is often quicker than waiting for a sponsorship intake to open.

In exceptional circumstances, an application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds may be possible, though the bar is high and these applications succeed on the strength of the individual facts rather than the family connection alone.

For a wider view of every category available to you, see our overview of family sponsorship in Canada.

How SEP Immigration Can Help With Relative Sponsorship

Most of the value in this category comes before you file anything. We assess whether you actually fall within one of the two eligible situations, calculate your family size correctly against the current LICO, and tell you plainly if the answer is no, so you do not spend $1,260 finding out.

If you do qualify, we prepare the sponsorship and permanent residence applications together, build the relationship evidence IRCC will look for, and advise on the IMM 1344 choice that determines your appeal rights.

Book a consultation or start with a free assessment and we will tell you where you stand.