Sponsorship · Still in process
The hardest wait of all. Your notes show whether the relationship has been assessed as genuine, and whether an interview is being considered.
A sponsorship file has two decisions: whether the sponsor is eligible, and whether the relationship is genuine. Those are assessed at different times, sometimes in different offices.
Genuineness assessment is the part that produces long silences. An officer may be waiting on a review, considering an interview, or holding the file pending further evidence — none of which shows in your online account.
Inland and outland applications follow different paths, and an inland applicant with an open work permit application has two files moving at different speeds.
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 spousal and partner sponsorship. We deliberately do not quote a number here, because any number we printed would be out of date within weeks.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 sponsorship file has two decisions: whether the sponsor is eligible, and whether the relationship is genuine. Those are assessed at different times, sometimes in different offices. Genuineness assessment is the part that produces long silences. An officer may be waiting on a review, considering an interview, or holding the file pending further evidence — none of which shows in your online account. Inland and outland applications follow different paths, and an inland applicant with an open work permit application has two files moving at different speeds.
For an application still in process, the notes show what has been recorded so far: whether sponsor eligibility has been approved — the first hurdle many people do not realise is separate; officer remarks on the genuineness of the relationship, including what evidence was found persuasive or thin; whether an interview has been flagged, scheduled or waived; requests for additional relationship evidence and whether a reply was recorded; status of medicals, criminality and security for the sponsored person; any concern recorded about a previous marriage, a prior sponsorship, or immigration history. 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 the sponsor still meets the undertaking requirements — a change in circumstances can stall a file; Check that both the sponsor's and the applicant's contact details are current; Check published processing times for inland versus outland — they differ significantly; Make sure any request for relationship evidence has actually been answered.
Your Spousal sponsorship 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.
