What the rule says: an H&C request cannot rescue an unmet public-policy condition
On July 22, 2026, IRCC published on its website an operational instruction titled "Humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) considerations: In-Canada permanent residence (PR) granting public policies where H&C requests were also made," setting out for frontline officers how to handle these cases.
At its core, the guidance holds that the conditions established by a temporary public policy are set separately by the immigration minister under their own authority and are not requirements of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) itself; officers therefore have "no authority to grant an exemption from a condition the minister sets in a public policy." Any PR application made under a temporary public policy must satisfy the officer that the applicant meets every condition the policy lays out.
The immediate consequence is direct: if an applicant invokes humanitarian and compassionate grounds to seek a waiver of one or more public-policy conditions they have failed to meet, the officer is to refuse the public-policy application and, in doing so, specify which requirement was not satisfied. Because officers have no power to grant such a waiver in the first place, refusal is in effect an unavoidable outcome for these applications.
The guidance stresses that the decision being made is on the public-policy application, so "the applicant is not entitled to a separate, additional decision on whether PR should be granted on H&C grounds." In other words, an H&C request bolted onto a public-policy application will not be assessed on its own. Officers must tell applicants that, to have their humanitarian circumstances considered, they must submit a fresh PR application on H&C grounds and pay the applicable fee -- meaning a refused applicant has to start the whole process over from the beginning.
The legal basis: subsection 25(1) versus section 25.2
Understanding the rule hinges on distinguishing two different legal authorities. Individual H&C relief rests on IRPA subsection 25(1) (A25(1)): a foreign national inside Canada who is inadmissible or does not meet the requirements of "the Act" may ask the minister, in writing, to be exempted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds from "any applicable criteria or obligations of the Act," with the best interests of any child directly affected taken into account; in weighing such a request, officers consider a range of factors, including the hardship the applicant might face.
Temporary public policies, by contrast, rest on a separate authority -- IRPA section 25.2 -- under which the minister can create time-limited policies granting specific exceptions to the normal rules for a group of people who meet defined conditions. Precisely because a public policy's eligibility conditions flow from section 25.2 rather than from the standards of "the Act," the H&C discretion in subsection 25(1) cannot reach those conditions. The Federal Court has confirmed as much -- in cases such as Bello v. Canada, 2023 FC 1094 -- finding that an officer assessing a section 25.2 public-policy application is not conducting a full H&C review. The new guidance simply writes this long-standing legal boundary into operational procedure.
Several immigration firms read the guidance as closing off what some applicants had treated as a "back door": attaching an H&C request to a public-policy PR application in the hope that, if a condition went unmet, the request would still carry the application to approval. The guidance makes clear that route does not work and that applicants must instead file a separate, standalone H&C application. The broad view across the sector is that the instruction creates no new restriction but rather operationalizes an existing legal position.
Who is affected: in-Canada applicants who rely on temporary public policies
Temporary public policies are a distinctive tool in Canada's immigration system: issued by the minister under their own authority and carrying firm expiry dates, they provide exceptions to the normal rules for cases that meet specified conditions. In recent years, several in-Canada PR pathways have been launched in exactly this form, and their applicants are therefore directly affected by the new guidance.
| Temporary public policy | Primary target group | Key dates |
|---|---|---|
| Hong Kong residents PR pathway (Stream A/B) | Applicants in Canada holding an HKSAR or BN(O) passport | Effective June 1, 2021; expires August 31, 2026 |
| Out-of-status/unauthorized home care worker temporary public policy | Out-of-status caregivers who have already applied under home care worker Stream A | Effective March 31, 2025; runs for five years |
| GTA out-of-status construction workers pathway (ended) | Out-of-status construction workers in the Greater Toronto Area | Launched in 2020; ended December 31, 2024; about 1,365 approved |
Of these, the Hong Kong residents PR pathway expires on August 31, 2026, and some applicants close to that deadline -- or who fall a little short on conditions such as language (CLB 5) -- might previously have hoped to make up the gap on H&C grounds; out-of-status or unauthorized home care workers could face a similar bind on language or work-experience thresholds. In addition, a national construction-worker PR pathway that Canada announced in 2025 but has yet to launch, together with the 2026 In-Canada Workers Initiative -- which expressly excludes construction and out-of-status workers -- leaves some out-of-status construction workers with little option other than a standalone H&C application. For these groups, the guidance means that once a public-policy application is refused for an unmet condition, they face reapplying, paying again and a long wait.
Context: shrinking H&C quotas and a rising backlog
The timing of the guidance is worth noting. Canada is sharply compressing the space for humanitarian PR: in the latest Immigration Levels Plan, the "H&C and Other" PR target falls from 13,750 in 2024 to 10,000 in 2025, 6,900 in 2026 and further to 4,300 in 2027 -- a reduction of roughly two-thirds over three years (see the accompanying chart).
At the same time, the backlog of in-Canada H&C applications is climbing. According to IRCC data submitted to a parliamentary committee, the in-Canada H&C inventory rose from about 45,000 people in November 2024 to 65,700 by the end of August 2025; yet only about 1,200 people were actually admitted under the in-Canada H&C category in the earlier part of 2025. Processing times are just as long: about 20 months outside Quebec, and as much as roughly 49 months within Quebec. Some law firms also note that the H&C approval rate is sliding, from about 60 percent to roughly 56 percent. Against this backdrop of tighter quotas, a high backlog and falling approvals, the confirmation that an H&C request cannot backstop a public-policy condition further narrows the room these applicants have to maneuver.
For foreign nationals planning to apply for in-Canada PR under a temporary public policy, the common advice from the immigration sector is to check off and satisfy every condition the policy sets, item by item; and where there is a genuine need to advance humanitarian grounds, to weigh carefully whether to file a standalone H&C PR application from the outset, rather than counting on an H&C request "stacked" onto a public-policy application as a fallback.
