IRCC Announces Completion of PGP 2021 Draw

As confirmed by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada through its website, the process of sending 30,000 invites for this year’s lottery has been finished. The lottery started on September 23, 2021, and lasted until October 4, 2021. Due to this lottery’s technicality, the Parents and Grandparents Program draw was said to be the largest ever.

Even before the pandemic took place, the IRCC has already planned to invite a total of 20,000 sponsors in 2020 and another 20,000 additional sponsors in 2021. The pandemic had caused IRCC to only invite 10,000 candidates last year and adjusted the number to 30,000 this year. However, considered sponsors for this year’s lottery were those who have completed an interest to sponsor form through the IRCC’s website between October and November 2020.

If a sponsor received a PGP 2021 invitation, they must first confirm if they are eligible for the program before submitting an application since the IRCC has given every invited sponsor a 60-day window time from the date of their invitation to submit their application.

For the PGP 2022 lottery, IRCC has yet to release detailed information about the structure. Under the IRCC’s Immigration Levels Plan 2022, the government is aiming to welcome a total of 23,500 parents and grandparents to Canada. With this being said, we can expect the numbers of the PGP 2022 applications that the IRCC will process to be the same as the recent years. Before COVID-19 emerged, the announcement with regards to the PGP lottery usually comes out around January of every year.