Vickneswary Aingkaran, Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant

The assessment applications, and the work permits that depend on them. That covers a high-wage assessment, a low-wage assessment with its cap and its separate housing and transport obligations, and the exemptions where no assessment is needed at all. The three are different applications with different evidence, and choosing the wrong one is the most common reason an employer's file goes back to the start.

The work runs from the employer's side as much as the applicant's. A labour market application is decided on recruitment the employer has already done, on wages measured against a published median, and on a transition plan where one is required. Most of that is fixed before anybody speaks to a consultant, which is why the assessment of whether a file is arguable happens before it is filed rather than after.

Spousal sponsorship, and the open work permit that can run alongside it. Those are two applications rather than one, they are assessed on different tests, and a couple can be approved on one and refused on the other.

The permit is the part most often misunderstood. It exists so a sponsored spouse is not left without status or income while the sponsorship is processed, and its eligibility narrowed in 2026, so advice given a year ago may no longer hold. Where a couple's circumstances put them outside the current rules, saying so at the outset is worth more than a filing that will be refused.

Both. Humanitarian and compassionate relief under section 25 is an application of last resort, not an alternative route, and it is decided on the whole of a person's circumstances rather than on any single qualifying fact. It carries bars that catch people who do not expect them, including the twelve month bar on applying after a negative refugee decision.

On the Refugee Board side she works on claims and on the evidence a claim turns on. The class of licence an RCIC holds sets what may be argued and where, and where a matter has to go to the lawyer, or to the Federal Court, it does. That line is drawn at the first meeting rather than discovered later.

To Kapil Rathod, in the same office. Judicial review and mandamus at the Federal Court are not within a consultant's scope, and neither is an appeal that has to be argued there. A file that starts as an application and becomes a challenge does not have to move firms.

A consultation with an RCIC is $250 rather than $500 with the lawyer, both inclusive of HST. The cheaper meeting is the right one for an ordinary filing, and you should not pay lawyer rates to be told your matter is one.