IRCC Backlog lowers for the first time in months

As of October 31, there were 1,056,100 applications in Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)’s backlog.
This is a decrease of 3.73% from the 1,097,000 applications that remained in the backlog as of September 30.

IRCC applications at a glance: Inventories and backlogs
To meet our annual immigration targets and help us increase processing capacity and efficiency, it’s important to have an inventory of applications for our programs. An inventory contains all applications received for a program that have not yet been finalized. This includes those that are processed within our service standards, as well as a backlog of applications that have been in our inventories longer than our service standards.

At any given time, IRCC is managing over 2 million applications from our inventories. In 2023, we finalized more than 7.3 million decisions across our lines of business.

Managing the backlog
Our goal is to process 80% of applications within our service standards. This allows for expected delays in some very complex cases or when we need more information from our clients before we can finalize their files.

However, if there are more people who apply than available spaces, it may not be possible to achieve this goal and processing times may increase in some categories.

See full details on canada.ca