Canada Sends Procedural Fairness Letters to 30,000 Asylum Seekers Under Bill C-12

(CANADA) — Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada issued procedural fairness letters to approximately 30,000 asylum seekers, warning that their claims may be ineligible for a full hearing before the Refugee Protection Division under Bill C-12.

The letters tell recipients to “make plans to depart Canada” or “leave Canada as soon as possible” if they are found ineligible. They are not immediate deportation orders, and they give recipients a 21-day window to submit additional evidence.

IRCC sent the notices after Bill C-12 received royal assent on March 26, 2026. The letters were first reported on April 10, 2026.

The measure reaches backward as well as forward. It applies retroactively to claims made after June 3, 2025, and affects people whose entry to Canada dates to June 2020 onward.

Under the law, one category of ineligibility covers claims filed more than 1 year after a person’s first entry into Canada. Another covers people who crossed irregularly from the United States and filed their asylum claims more than 14 days later.

A further ground applies to claimants who previously made claims in another jurisdiction or who transited through a safe third country. In those cases, the full Refugee Protection Division hearing can be barred before the claim reaches the tribunal stage.

The letters mark one of the first broad administrative steps under the new law. Their language puts recipients on notice that the federal government is treating the file as a potential eligibility failure, not as a routine scheduling matter.

That distinction carries immediate consequences. Claimants found ineligible lose access to automatic work permits and move into an expedited Pre-Removal Risk Assessment, or PRRA, rather than a tribunal hearing.

A PRRA evaluates the risk a person would face if removed from Canada. The policy keeps that process available even where Bill C-12 blocks a full refugee hearing.

Recipients who do not overcome the concerns raised in the procedural fairness letters can also face deportation orders if no new evidence justifies eligibility. The federal notice, as described in the letters, pairs that possibility with a direct instruction to prepare to leave.

Employers can also be drawn into the fallout. Businesses that hire workers who become ineligible under the new rules could face fines of up to CAD 50,000 per worker.

That figure puts labour consequences alongside immigration consequences. A claimant who loses automatic work authorization can face removal pressure at the same time an employer faces a financial penalty for keeping that person on staff.

IRCC has tied the policy to pressure inside the asylum system. The department cites a 196,000-case backlog and says the changes are needed to comply with the Safe Third Country Agreement.

The backlog number gives the government a scale argument for the move. Ottawa is pairing that administrative case with a legal one, presenting the new screening rules as part of its effort to bring the system into line with existing border and third-country obligations.

Immigration lawyers have challenged the fairness of the process. They argue that complex asylum claims cannot be assessed fairly on paper alone, particularly when a procedural fairness letter becomes the gateway to exclusion from a full hearing.

That criticism goes to how the new system sorts cases. A tribunal hearing usually allows a claimant to present evidence and testimony in a fuller setting, while a paper-based response to a procedural fairness letter compresses the record into written submissions made under a short deadline.

The deadline matters because the letters set a fixed response period of 21 days. Within that window, recipients must produce additional evidence that could preserve eligibility or counter the department’s concerns.

People who receive one of the notices are not being removed the moment the letter arrives. The document opens a process, but it also signals that the case has shifted into a stage where the government is actively considering a finding of ineligibility.

That leaves little room for delay. Once the response period closes, the claimant can be pushed out of the regular refugee stream and into the faster PRRA channel if IRCC maintains the ineligibility finding.

The retroactive structure of Bill C-12 is central to the scale of the action. Because the law reaches claims after June 3, 2025 and entries dating back to June 2020, the letters do not target only new arrivals at the border.

They also reach people who have already spent time in Canada before making a claim. Anyone who filed more than 1 year after first entry falls into one of the law’s clearest disqualifying categories.

The same is true for some people who crossed irregularly from the United States and did not file within 14 days. Under the new framework, timing now sits at the center of eligibility for a full hearing.

Prior contact with another asylum system can also block access to the Refugee Protection Division. So can travel through a safe third country, another category that the law uses to narrow the pool of claimants who can proceed to a tribunal.

Those rules align with the government’s stated emphasis on the Safe Third Country Agreement. They also widen the number of claimants who may never reach the hearing stage, even if they remain able to seek a risk review through a PRRA.

The practical gap between those two tracks is substantial. A full tribunal hearing and an expedited PRRA are not the same process, and lawyers arguing against the new approach have focused on that difference.

Paper review, they say, can miss facts that emerge only when a claimant testifies or answers questions directly. Cases involving trauma, inconsistent records, cross-border movement, or prior contact with other countries can be especially difficult to reduce to a short written reply.

IRCC’s letters, however, do not frame the issue as a final merits ruling on whether someone fears persecution. They frame it first as an eligibility question under Bill C-12, with the claimant invited to respond before the department decides whether the person can proceed to the Refugee Protection Division.

That is why procedural fairness letters now sit at the center of the process. They are the mechanism through which the department tells recipients that their cases may be screened out under the new law before any full refugee hearing takes place.

People who receive those letters still have a chance to answer within 21 days. If the response does not change the department’s view, the path narrows quickly to a PRRA and possible removal.

The letters’ wording reflects that pressure. “Make plans to depart Canada” and “leave Canada as soon as possible” place recipients on notice that the federal government is preparing for the possibility that they will not remain in the regular asylum system.

With approximately 30,000 asylum seekers now caught in that review, Bill C-12 has moved from legislation on the books to active screening with immediate effects on hearings, work permits, PRRA access, and the risk of removal from Canada.