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There are two ways for a Canadian citizen or permanent resident to bring a parent or grandparent to Canada, and they give very different things. The Parents and Grandparents Program makes you a permanent resident (often shortened to PR), someone allowed to live, work and study in Canada with no time limit. The Super Visa leaves you a visitor, but one who can stay for years at a time and come and go. Which is open to you turns on two things: how much income your child or grandchild in Canada can show, and whether the sponsorship intake is running at all, because it is invitation-only and pauses between rounds.
You are the parent or grandparent of someone living in Canada, or you are that person in Canada working out which route to start. If the person in Canada is your husband, wife or partner rather than your child, read our guide to spouse and partner sponsorship instead; our post on visas, permanent residence and citizenship explains those words. The department behind both routes is Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC.
Your child or grandchild in Canada is the sponsor: they apply to bring you and sign a written promise to support you financially, called an undertaking. You do not apply on your own.
IRCC's sponsor eligibility page says your sponsor must be at least 18, a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident, or a person registered as an Indian under the Indian Act, and must live in Canada: their main home address has to be in Canada from the day they apply until IRCC decides. The same page lists what stops someone sponsoring at all, among them prison, undischarged bankruptcy, social assistance for a reason other than a disability, and default on an earlier sponsorship.
This is the part that surprises families. Your sponsor cannot simply file an application: they first submit a short interest to sponsor form, and IRCC randomly selects people from that pool and invites them to apply. Only an invited sponsor can send in the full application.
IRCC's how to apply page describes the most recent round: from 28 July 2025 it invited people who had submitted an interest to sponsor form back in 2020, sent 17,860 invitations over roughly two weeks with a goal of accepting 10,000 complete applications, and closed applications on 9 October 2025. So a form filed in one year can be drawn years later, and most people in the pool are not drawn in any round.
Not always, and this is the first thing to check. When the programme is paused, IRCC's programme page carries a notice saying it will not accept new interest to sponsor forms or invite potential sponsors until further notice, while applications already submitted keep being processed. Nothing is announced in advance, so check that page before you plan anything.
IRCC's income requirements page says the sponsor must meet the income requirement in each of the three tax years before the date they apply, proved by a notice of assessment from the Canada Revenue Agency (the tax office's yearly statement of what a person earned). The amount depends on their family size, which counts everyone they are responsible for including you, and IRCC publishes the amounts as a table on that page. We print none here: they change with each intake. If the sponsor's own income falls short, their spouse or common-law partner can co-sign to combine the two. Quebec sets its own income rules.
A long time. IRCC's undertaking page sets it at 20 years for a parent or grandparent, or 10 years for a sponsor living in Quebec, counted from the day you become a permanent resident. If you receive provincial or municipal social assistance in that period, your sponsor has to repay it.
The programme is for the sponsor's own parents and grandparents, by birth or adoption. As with any permanent residence application, you will be asked for an immigration medical exam and police certificates (often called police clearance certificates), both covered in our post on police certificates and medical exams.
IRCC's Super Visa overview describes a visa that provides multiple entries for a period of up to 10 years and lets you visit your children or grandchildren for 5 years at a time. The programme page above adds that a parent or grandparent already in Canada on a Super Visa can apply for a 2-year extension of their stay. You cannot include dependants, and for a stay of 6 months or less IRCC points you to an ordinary visitor visa instead.
You stay a visitor throughout: no undertaking and no invitation to wait for, and no permanent residence at the end either.
IRCC's Super Visa eligibility page says the person inviting you must be your biological or adopted child or grandchild, a Canadian citizen, a permanent resident or a registered Indian, at least 18 and living in Canada, must meet the minimum necessary income for their family size, and must give you a signed letter of invitation. IRCC's forms and documents page says that letter has to include proof of that income and list every family member counted in it. Their spouse or common-law partner may co-sign.
This is the requirement that catches people out. The eligibility page says you must show proof of private health insurance valid for a minimum of 1 year from the date you enter Canada, bought from a Canadian insurance company or from a company outside Canada approved by the minister. The forms and documents page adds that it must cover your health care, hospitalization and repatriation (the cost of returning you home) with minimum emergency coverage of $100,000. A foreign insurer has to be authorised by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and appear on its public list. Check that before you pay: a policy from an insurer that does not qualify does not count.
You also need an immigration medical exam, and you must be outside Canada when you apply.
The two are not rivals: a common plan is to hold a Super Visa now and keep an interest form in the pool for whenever intake reopens. If your family is also weighing New Zealand, our post on Parent Boost and Parent Resident visas is the same comparison there.
Both routes are assessed as Canada pathways, alongside everything else listed on our Canada page. The questionnaire asks which family members you have in Canada and what status they hold. From that answer, the report checks the Parents and Grandparents Program's first requirement, that you have a child or grandchild in Canada who is a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and hands you the sponsor's income test as a checklist step: "Confirm your sponsor meets the income requirement", with IRCC's page linked. For the Super Visa it lists two steps the same way: confirming the inviter meets the income requirement, and buying private medical insurance.
It does not decide those steps for you. It does not ask for your sponsor's tax figures, it cannot tell you whether the intake is open on the day you read it, and it never says whether an application will succeed, because that is IRCC's decision alone. Its job is to put both routes' requirements beside your own answers in one place, rather than leaving your family to read two government sections and guess.
The questionnaire is free and takes a few minutes, and the eligibility summary at the end is free too. Start the free questionnaire for Canada, see how these two routes and the others line up with your situation, then decide whether to unlock the full report.
Answer our free questionnaire and see your eligibility summary instantly. You only pay to unlock your full personalized immigration report.