The Family/Spousal Permanent Resident Applications (both within Canada and from outside Canada) are submitted to the respective Case Processing Centers of IRCC via mail. Online Application systems are not available to these clients. 

IRCC takes pride in announcing the entire application process being open and transparent, and the ability for a normal person to apply without external assistance from an immigration consultant or an attorney. Thousands of clients have successfully used the resources provided by IRCC to avail the immigration benefits, not only in the Family Immigration class but also in the Express Entry and other immigration programs. This has reduced the cost of immigration for an applicant by an average of approximately CA$5000 in terms of fees paid to a consultant/representative. 

Without the online application for Family Immigration applications, the clients send the applications via mail. Prior to Covid19 disruptions, the IRCC CPC's would check the application for completeness and send the AOR (Acknolwdegment receipt) within a few days of receipt of the PR applications. However, this is not the case these days. Due to the pandemic disruptions, application processing has been significantly delayed. At the time of writing this petition ( Nov 2020), IRCC is processing the applications received in May 2020. That is close to 180 days of delay. The delay I am taking is for the IRCC to finish the completeness check and send the AOR to the clients. In other words, if there is any information missing the entire application would be returned after 180 days of waiting. By this time, half the documents the clients collected at the time of application would have expired (such as police certificates). On top of that, these clients would have applied for Open Work Permit when they had the status in Canada (applicable for clients applying from inside Canada). By the time their application is returned for incompleteness, the clients might have lost their status in Canada or if they have applied for an extension and/or change of status, the separate application will also be "in progress" with IRCC. 

The ask here is to review the process and make temporary updates to how IRCC treats minor mistakes in the application as "Incomplete." In recent days, we have seen that IRCC has returned the application just because the address did not have a country listed  (Specifically in IMM 5406), or a client did not write "Not Applicable" because a section did not apply to them, or a Date of Birth of a family member was missing who is not a part of the application or not migrating to Canada. It is our humble suggestion that this type of information can be requested via webform or asking the clients to send those forms while not losing their spot in the waiting queue. 

By requesting minor missing information via web form, it will reduce the cost of sending the application back and forth, and also does not contribute to the spread of COVID via the packages in transit. While returning the applications for these types of unintentional human errors in the past did not affect the clients much due to the time factor, following the same procedures these days is causing unintentional undue hardships to the clients. This is also making the clients question their ability to apply by themselves, which is a setback to the success stories of the Canadian Immigration slogan. 

I, therefore, request the Honorable Minister Marco Mendicino, to use technology to address this issue by having IRCC request for additional information in case of minor mistakes; and in the long run to enable clients to apply Family PR applications using the Online account instead of paper applications.