Permanent residence · Still in process
Nominated by a province but the federal side has gone quiet. The notes show where the handover actually stands.
A PNP application has two halves. The province assesses and nominates; IRCC then does the federal assessment — admissibility, medicals, security and verification of the nomination itself.
Applicants often assume a nomination means approval is automatic. It is not: IRCC still assesses the federal requirements independently, and that is where the silence usually happens.
Paper-based and online streams progress differently, and the online account rarely reflects which half is holding things up.
A long wait is not automatically a stalled wait. Rule these out first — several are things applicants genuinely miss.
IRCC publishes live processing times, and they change often — check the current time for Provincial Nominee Program. We deliberately do not quote a number here, because any number we printed would be out of date within weeks.
This is the part almost nobody realises. You do not have to be refused to request your file. An application that is still in process has notes too — and for a file that has gone silent, they are usually the only way to find out what is actually happening.
If your notes contain any of these, the delay has a cause you can act on rather than simply wait out.
By far the most common one across every programme is the last kind: IRCC asked for something and never got a reply — often because the request went to an agent's email, or to an address the applicant no longer uses. The file then sits indefinitely, waiting on you.
Read the full escalation guide for stuck applications →
A PNP application has two halves. The province assesses and nominates; IRCC then does the federal assessment — admissibility, medicals, security and verification of the nomination itself. Applicants often assume a nomination means approval is automatic. It is not: IRCC still assesses the federal requirements independently, and that is where the silence usually happens. Paper-based and online streams progress differently, and the online account rarely reflects which half is holding things up.
For an application still in process, the notes show what has been recorded so far: whether the provincial nomination has been received and verified federally; the status of admissibility, medical and security screening as separate entries; any concern recorded about the genuineness of the job offer or the intention to reside in the nominating province; which visa office or processing centre holds the file; requests for further documents and whether a reply was recorded. Your GCMS notes are a snapshot of what was recorded on your file at the time IRCC processed your request — not a live tracker. They will not give you a decision date. What they do give you is the truth about which stage your file actually reached, which checks are outstanding, and whether anything was asked of you that you never answered.
No. A Privacy Act request is handled by IRCC's ATIP unit, which is separate from the officers deciding your application. Requesting your own file is a legal right and it does not affect processing of the application itself.
Yes to both. Under the Privacy Act there is no fee to request your own personal information, and since July 2022 any person anywhere in the world can file directly, in their own name, with no representative in Canada required.
No, and anyone promising that is not telling you the truth. The notes will not contain a decision date. They tell you which stage your file genuinely reached, which checks are still outstanding, and whether IRCC asked you for something you never answered — which is often the real reason a file has stopped moving.
Confirm your nomination certificate has not expired — an expired nomination stops the federal file; Check the published processing time for your specific province's stream; Make sure the province has your current contact details too, not only IRCC; Check whether the province requires periodic updates from you to keep the nomination live.
Your PNP file has a written record. Requesting it from Canada is free and takes about twenty minutes — we publish every step, with a screenshot of every screen. If the notes come back and you cannot read them, send them to us.
