A humanitarian and compassionate application in Canada asks an officer to set aside a rule that would otherwise apply. It is discretionary, it is refused far more often than it is granted, and filing one does not stop a removal.
About this work
Subsection 25(1) lets the Minister grant permanent residence, or an exemption from any applicable criterion or obligation of the Act, where humanitarian and compassionate considerations relating to the applicant justify it, taking into account the best interests of a child directly affected. For a foreign national already in Canada the Minister must examine the request. For one outside Canada the Minister may.
The exemption power is broader than most people realise, and it is not only a route to residence. It can excuse a requirement somebody cannot meet: an application made from inside Canada that ordinarily has to be made from outside, a missing document, a deadline, an eligibility rule. Framing the request as an exemption from a specific obligation is often stronger than framing it as a general plea.
It is not available to everybody. Section 25(1) excludes anyone inadmissible under section 34, 35, 35.1 or 37, which is security, human or international rights violations, and organized criminality. Ordinary criminality under section 36 is not on that list, so a criminal record does not by itself close this door.
Before anything else
Subsection 25(1.2) of the Act tells the Minister when a request may not even be examined. None of those bars is about the strength of the case. An application filed inside one is not weighed and refused, it is not looked at, and the fee goes with it.
Paragraph 25(1.2)(c) bars the request where less than 12 months have passed since the claim was rejected, withdrawn after substantive evidence was heard, or abandoned by the Refugee Protection Division or the Appeal Division, or since the Federal Court refused leave or denied judicial review. The clock runs from the last of those, not the first.
Subsection 25(1.21) lifts that bar in two situations only. Where removal would subject the applicant to a risk to life caused by their country's inability to provide adequate health or medical care. And where removal would have an adverse effect on the best interests of a child directly affected. The second is the one that applies most often, and it has to be made out rather than asserted.
While a claim sits before the Refugee Protection Division or the Refugee Appeal Division, paragraph 25(1.2)(b) prevents the request being examined at all. The two cannot run alongside each other, and choosing which to make first is a decision with consequences.
Paragraph 25(1.2)(a) bars a second request while the first is pending. There is no filing a stronger one later while the weak one is still open, which is the practical reason not to file a thin application to buy time.
Side by side
5 points of difference
These get confused constantly, and the confusion is expensive. They ask different questions, are decided by different people in different ways, and only one of them affects a removal.
Before the meeting
6 things to bring
Bring what you have and say what is missing. A meeting with the papers in front of it settles in one sitting what two telephone calls will not.
Our approach
The same four steps on every matter, whether it is a refusal at the Federal Court or a ticket at the Provincial Offences court.
Book a consultationWe take the full history and read the documents before offering an opinion. Most bad advice comes from acting on half the facts.
You get a candid read on strength, timeline and cost, including when the honest answer is that you do not need to hire anyone.
We prepare the application, the defence or the appeal properly the first time, because fixing a weak record later is harder and dearer.
You hear from us at each stage, and you hear what a wait actually means rather than a date chosen to sound better.
Reported decisions
7 allowed of 22 reported since 2023
Public judgments of the Federal Court with Kapil Rathod as counsel of record, each checkable by citation on the court's own site. The rest were dismissed and are listed with these ones.
Super visa, parents and grandparents
2026 FC 99Docket IMM-23381-24
Application allowedWork permit, Temporary Foreign Worker Program
2026 FC 105Docket IMM-18690-24
Application allowedTemporary resident visa
2026 FC 805Docket IMM-20802-24
Application allowedPermanent residence, Express Entry
2025 FC 275Docket IMM-1797-24
Application allowedWork permit, job offer
2024 FC 1928Docket IMM-6445-23
Application allowedStudy permit
2024 FC 1487Docket IMM-3700-23
Application allowedTemporary resident visa
2024 FC 1453Docket IMM-10337-23
Application allowedA humanitarian and compassionate application in Canada is discretionary, it is barred for twelve months after a refugee refusal, and only one can be pending at a time.
Those three facts decide when it should be made far more than the strength of any single hardship.
Common questions
8 answered here
Written to be read once and acted on rather than to be rung about. Each answer is complete where the law allows a complete answer.
It comes from the Supreme Court of Canada in Kanthasamy v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2015 SCC 61, and it is more generous than the phrase most officers grew up with. For years these were decided against a standard of unusual and undeserved or disproportionate hardship. The Court held those words are descriptive rather than prescriptive: they describe the kinds of situations that may warrant relief, and they are not a threshold an applicant has to clear.
What replaced it is the older and wider formulation the Court restored. The officer asks whether the circumstances, looked at as a whole, would excite in a reasonable person in a civilised community a desire to relieve the misfortunes of another. It is an equitable question rather than a checklist, and it is answered on the file as a whole rather than factor by factor.
The Court also confirmed that evidence which was not enough to succeed on a refugee claim can still support relief here. That matters more than any other line in the judgment for people coming to this after a refusal.
Where a child is directly affected, their best interests have to be identified, defined and examined with real attention. A decision that mentions a child in a sentence and moves on is the most commonly successful ground of judicial review on these files.
Because subsection 25(1.3) says so, and the line it draws is subtle. In examining a request from a foreign national in Canada, the Minister may not consider the factors taken into account in deciding whether somebody is a Convention refugee under section 96 or a person in need of protection under subsection 97(1). But the same subsection then requires the Minister to consider elements related to the hardships that affect the applicant.
So the same underlying facts are not excluded. What is excluded is the legal framework of risk. An applicant cannot say that they face persecution and therefore should be allowed to stay. They can say that conditions in the country they would return to, and what those conditions would mean for them personally, amount to hardship that justifies relief.
In practice that is a rewriting job rather than a resubmission. A refugee narrative reworked into hardship submissions reads as an appeal against the refusal, which is what officers are looking out for. Submissions built around establishment here, family ties, the position of any children, health, and the specific consequences of return read as what the section actually asks about.
These are applications of last resort, and the two things that carry them take time to exist. Establishment in Canada is measured in years of work, community, tenancy and relationships. The best interests of a child are strongest where the child has been here long enough for removal to disrupt something real.
Because only one request can be pending at a time, a thin application filed early occupies the only slot available, and a stronger case eighteen months later cannot be filed while it sits. The fee of $1,260 with the right of permanent residence fee, or $660 without it, goes with it.
Filing also does not stay removal. An application pending is not a reason the Canada Border Services Agency will not enforce a removal order, and these are regularly decided after the applicant has left. Where removal is imminent the remedy is an application to the Federal Court for a stay, which is a separate and urgent piece of work, not this.
None of that means waiting indefinitely. It means the application is worth making when the material is there to make it, and that the timing is a decision to take deliberately rather than in reaction to a letter.
No. Paragraph 25(1.2)(b) prevents the request being examined while a claim is pending before the Refugee Protection Division or the Refugee Appeal Division. After a refusal there is then a further twelve month bar under paragraph 25(1.2)(c), subject to two narrow exceptions.
No. A pending application is not a stay of removal, and these are regularly decided after the applicant has been removed from Canada. If removal is imminent, the urgent step is an application to the Federal Court for a stay, which is separate work on a much shorter timetable.
In two situations, under subsection 25(1.21). Where removal would subject you to a risk to life caused by your country's inability to provide adequate health or medical care. Or where removal would have an adverse effect on the best interests of a child directly affected. The second is the more common, and it has to be evidenced rather than stated.
Not automatically. Section 25(1) excludes people inadmissible under sections 34, 35, 35.1 and 37, which cover security, human or international rights violations and organized criminality. Ordinary criminality under section 36 is not excluded, so the application can be made, though the conviction will be weighed along with everything else.
We will tell you what we think of your particular file and we will not give you a percentage. These are discretionary decisions made on the papers by an officer applying an equitable test, and refusals are common. What we can say is that the applications that do well are built on documented establishment and, where there is a child, on a properly evidenced account of what removal would do to that child.
Bring every decision you have received and the dates. A humanitarian and compassionate application in Canada turns on timing before it turns on anything else.
