Petition Target

Hon. Lena Metlege Diab, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)

We, the undersigned, are asking Minister Diab and IRCC to immediately halt the bulk refusal of Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) applications filed by Portage College graduates, and to reverse the unpublished policy change quietly added to the IRCC website on June 24, 2026.

What is happening
Since late June 2026, IRCC officers have been refusing PGWP applications from Portage College graduates in identical wording:

"The completed a non-credit program, as such the program does not meet the criteria for work authorization under R205(c)(ii). Application refused under R200(1)(c)(ii)."

These are not isolated files. They are a coordinated wave of refusals, hitting applicants who:

Were legally admitted to Canada on valid study permits;
Enrolled at a Designated Learning Institution (DLI) listed on the official IRCC DLI list;
Paid full international tuition, often exceeding $15,000 per year;
Attended and completed the program in good faith;
Applied for their PGWP within the required window under every published rule that existed at the time of enrolment.

Why this is unfair
1. The word "credit" does not exist in the law.
The refusals cite section 205(c)(ii) and section 200(1)(c)(ii) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. Neither section — nor sections 186, 211.1, or any other operative PGWP provision — contains the word "credit." The entire legal basis for these refusals is absent from the regulation IRCC is citing.

2. The "non-credit" rule is a webpage edit, not a regulation.
The requirement lives in exactly one place: a bullet on the IRCC webpage "Post-graduation work permit: About the program" and an internal Program Delivery Instruction. The Wayback Machine confirms this bullet was absent as of June 6, 2026, and present by July 8, 2026, with the page's dcterms.modified metadata reading June 24, 2026.

before June 24 2026

After June 24 2026

There was no Canada Gazette publication. No Ministerial Instruction under section 87.3 of IRPA. No regulatory amendment. No public consultation. No transition period. No grandfathering for applicants already enrolled.

3. It is being applied retroactively.
Students who enrolled in 2023 and 2024 — before this webpage bullet ever existed — are being refused today under a rule that did not exist when they signed their tuition contracts. This violates the most basic principle of fair notice.

4. Officers are ignoring institutional evidence.
The Federal Court has held in Tcerkovnaia 2022 FC 861, Sugagata, Munyanyi, and Sharma that officers must engage with the evidence institutions provide about their own programs. In the current wave of refusals, officers are refusing without engaging with tuition invoices, transcripts, Letters of Acceptance, or the college's own program materials.

5. Portage College has multiple program streams that are being conflated.
Portage College delivers programs through three distinct lineages — main campus credit programs, third-party non-credit delivery (CIOT and Campbell), and full-credit CodeCore delivery. Officers are refusing entire cohorts without correctly identifying which stream the applicant actually completed.

The human cost
Every one of these refusals represents:

A young person who has lived, studied, and paid taxes in Canada for two to four years;
A family that mortgaged property back home to fund Canadian tuition;
A community that invested in a graduate expected to contribute to the Canadian labour market;
A landlord, an employer, a bank, and a Service Canada file all built on the reasonable expectation that Canada would honour its published rules.
Refusing these permits ends careers before they start, forces graduates to leave Canada within weeks, and destroys the trust international students placed in a system that told them, in writing, that their program qualified.

What we are asking
We call on Minister Diab and IRCC to:

Immediately pause all PGWP refusals on Portage College files pending review.
Reverse the June 24, 2026 webpage change or, at minimum, apply it prospectively — only to applicants who enrolled after the change was published.
Reopen and reconsider every refusal issued under this wording since June 2026, at no cost to the applicant.
Publish any future PGWP eligibility change in the Canada Gazette, with public consultation and a proper transition period, as the Statutory Instruments Act requires.
Instruct officers to engage with institutional evidence — transcripts, tuition invoices, Letters of Acceptance, and program materials — before refusing on program-characterization grounds, consistent with Tcerkovnaia and Sharma.
Provide a written policy statement clarifying the legal authority for the "non-credit program" exclusion and its interaction with sections 200, 205, 186, and 211.1 of the Regulations.
Why this matters beyond Portage College
If IRCC can add a rule to a webpage on Wednesday and use it to refuse an application on Thursday, then no international student, no worker, no visitor, and no permanent resident applicant is safe from a rule that did not exist when they applied. This is a rule-of-law problem, not just an immigration problem.

Canada told these graduates their programs qualified. They believed us. They paid. They studied. They graduated. Now IRCC is telling them, on the basis of a webpage edit, that the country they built their future in does not want them anymore.

Sign this petition and tell Minister Diab: publish your rules, honour your promises, and stop refusing graduates under a law that does not exist.

 
Petition organized by VG Immigration Services Inc. — Dimple Verma, RCIC-IRB (R708308). For the full legal analysis, verbatim regulatory text, and Federal Court jurisprudence supporting this petition, read the detailed breakdown at vgis.ca.