Automatic Extensions for Missing Documents are no longer available from the IRCC.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) announced in an April 2021 notice that the previous policy of automatically extending deadlines for applicants experiencing delays in submitting necessary documentation due to the COVID-19 pandemic would no longer apply. As processing times for many applications continue to lengthen, IRCC believes that this would help to reduce the backlog of applications in process. Despite the fact that IRCC can no longer automatically extend deadlines for submitting necessary documents, applicants may still seek extensions if their applications’ required documents are missing and could not be retrieved due to pandemic.

In practice, applicants with IRCC applications who have been requested to submit additional documentation can expect a follow-up request from the agency in the coming weeks or months, with a thirty-day deadline to comply before an officer makes a decision on the application or finds it abandoned. If COVID-19 disturbances begin to affect an applicant, they should contact IRCC to request an extension until the thirty-day deadline expires in the follow-up request, along with a “fair clarification of how [the applicant] is affected by a COVID-19 disturbance.”

The clarification and extension request will then be decided at the discretion of an IRCC Officer, with a thirty-day extension granted if reasonable.  If the explanation is found to be irrational, IRCC will decide the application based on the details provided.  IRCC provides the following examples as “rational explanations”:

• Temporary closure of a Visa Application Centre (VAC) or Application Support Centre (ASC) that prevents biometrics from being provided in an application; or
• A pandemic lockout that prevents an applicant from accessing supporting documentation across a region or area (i.e., police certificate, undergoing a medical examination)

IRCC also stated that they will be monitoring local conditions and will not notify clients if a pandemic lockdown or service-related interruption affects before the crisis is resolved.Hopefully, this is only the first of several steps taken by IRCC to clear the backlog of applications in the works, as tensions grow with what seems to be ever-increasing processing times.