Canada Visa Refusal Appeals: IRCC Reconsideration & Federal Court Review
Got a visa refusal from IRCC?
You have options. Whether you’re considering an IRCC reconsideration request, preparing a Federal Court judicial review application, or exploring immigration appeal options, understanding your deadlines and legal remedies is critical. This guide explains visa refusal appeals in Canada, including reconsideration requests to IRCC, Federal Court applications for leave and judicial review, and the appeal process timeline.
Were you denied entry or refused a visa, work permit, study permit or permanent residency for Canada?
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Can I appeal for a Canada visa refusal?
In most cases, yes, you can. A visa refusal appeal – which seeks a reconsideration or redetermination of your application – is a legal remedy for you to pursue if you believe there was an error made in your application decision. The law determines when these legal remedies are available to you. Our lawyers are knowledgeable in the law of immigration legal remedies, including Applications for Leave and For Judicial Review, Visa and Immigration Appeals, and Reconsideration of refusal decisions from Canada Visa Offices and IRCC.
Our visa immigration appeal lawyers are qualified to appear before the Supreme Court of Canada, Federal Court of Canada, Federal Court of Appeal, and Immigration and Refugee Board, including the Immigration Division, Immigration Appeals Division, Refugee Division, and Refugee Appeals Division, as well Ontario Divisional Court, Ontario Superior Court, Ontario Court of Appeal, and at Detention Reviews at Immigration Holding Centres across Canada.
The first step is to understand is if a visa appeal option is available to you, what that visa appeal option is, and when is the deadline for you to appeal your visa appeal. You must appeal your visa refusal before the deadline. Deadlines vary depending on the visa appeal option available to you, the type of application refused, and the place where the decision was made.
Before you give up hope, hire us for your Judicial Review or Immigration Appeal.
Understanding IRCC Visa Refusals and Your Options
When IRCC refuses your application, they send you a letter explaining why. Sometimes these letters are clear. Often? They’re frustratingly vague. You’ll see phrases like “not satisfied you will leave Canada” or “insufficient ties to home country.” What does that even mean for your specific situation?
Here’s what most people don’t realize: that refusal letter is just the surface. Behind it sits something called GCMS notes – the detailed record of everything the officer was thinking when they made their decision. These notes are gold. They tell you the real story of why you were refused.
In 2025, IRCC began to share these GCMS notes with applicants whenever they refused your visa application. The advantage of this is that, in most cases, you no longer need to request the reasons to understand the visa officer’s rationale for their decision.
However, the officer’s decision rationale is not always shared with you. Depending on what was refused, where you are, and when it happened, you might be able to:
- Request GCMS notes by making an Access to Information or Privacy Act request, also called an ATIP application, or
- Request that the reasons for the decision be provided when you file your visa appeal
Depending on the type of application refused, where the application was made, and whether you were given the reasons, you have options. You may decide to:
- Ask the IRCC visa or immigration officer to reconsider their decision
- Apply to the Federal Court of Canada For Leave and for Judicial Review
- Appeal to the Immigration and Refugee Board (Immigration Division, Refugee Division or Appeal Division)
- Submit a completely new application with better evidence
The trick is figuring out which path makes sense for you – and fast because some of these options have deadlines measured in days, not weeks.
Already in Canada when you got refused? That changes things. Your options might be different. Your deadlines are definitely different. And the stakes are higher because you could lose your legal status.
Reconsideration vs Appeal: What’s the Difference?
A reconsideration request asks IRCC to review their decision again when can demonstrate that the original decision contained an error. Reconsideration is submitted directly to IRCC. Normally, you cannot submit new evidence when asking for reconsideration.
An appeal is a formal legal process where you challenge IRCC’s decision before a court or tribunal, such as the Federal Court or Immigration and Refugee Board Division. Appeals involve legal arguments about why the decision was wrong in law or fact. Some appeals only consider the evidence that you submitted when you made your application. Other appeals – called de novo appeals – allow you to submit new evidence.
GCMS Notes and Refusal Letters
Your refusal letter provides the basic reasons for refusal, but the complete decision-making notes contained within the Global Case Management System (also known as GCMS notes) contain detailed information about why your application was refused. Understanding these notes is essential for determining your best course of action, whether that may be to pursue a reconsideration request, an appeal, or a new application with stronger evidence.
IRCC Reconsideration Requests: How It Actually Works
Let’s say you are thinking about asking IRCC to reconsider your application decision. What do you need to ask yourself?
First, you need to determine what type of application was refused and where it was refused. This will help you determine the type of appeal process available to you and your deadline for submitting your appeal.
Your appeal deadline begins from the date you received your decision, not the date that you received your GCMS notes.
Next, you must understand the reasons for the visa refusal decision. This means you must have the GCMS notes, or decision reasons, so that you can review them. These show you what the officer thought when they decided your case, including what documents they looked at, and what specific concerns led to the refusal.
If you were not given your GCMS notes by IRCC when your application was refused, you will need to apply for them. It can take 30 days or more for IRCC to send you your notes. But, your appeal deadline can be shorter than 30 days, meaning that if you do not appeal it before you get your GCMS notes, you will not be able to appeal your decision.
This means that, before you decide to pursue reconsideration, you must determine what is your appeal deadline, and if you cannot obtain your GCMS notes before your appeal deadline, then this may not be the right strategy for you.
In practice, this means that lawyers often file requests for reconsideration before we have received the GCMS notes.
An experience immigration lawyer is needed by you to review your application. A lawyer may be able to estimate the reasons for the decision from the evidence provided, the type of law applicable, and the generic “reasons” given by the IRCC officer.
An experienced immigration lawyer who is familiar with immigration law and process, and who can exercise their professional knowledge, skill and judgement, may be able to prepare a reconsideration request for you without GCMS notes.
However, if you decide to wait until you get your GCMS notes before you decide which appeal option to undertake, you might miss your appeal deadline. In other words, delay is your decision to not undertake an available appeal option. Delay is therefore a decision by you, and if you make it without consulting an immigration lawyer, you may be making this decision inadvertently or for the wrong reasons.
If have the refusal reasons, you then can evaluate the decision by answering several questions, such as, did the officer consider all the evidence submitted? Did you include all relevant evidence needed by the officer to make an informed decision? Did the officer apply the correct law? Was the officer’s decision making reasonable? Did the officer give you a chance to provide more evidence? Did the law require the officer to give you a chance to provide more evidence? Will your appeal options be able meet your goals, including desired outcomes and timelines? Are these goals within your financial capacity to reasonably pursue?
An immigration lawyer can help you evaluate these questions.
If after answering these questions, you decide to submit a reconsideration request, you must decide what you can and cannot put into a reconsideration request.
Here’s what works in reconsideration requests:
Pointing to strong evidence that directly contradicts the refusal reason
Suppose an officer said you don’t have ties to your home country. Reference to them the documents that you submitted that show most strongly your ties, including any business you own, your property deed, and the family members back home who depend on you. Be specific.
Explain that the officer misunderstood the evidence
Maybe the officer thought your job offer was part-time when it is actually full-time, and failed to calculate the appropriate level of total funds available to you. Or perhaps the officer missed a key document. Show them exactly what they missed.
Incorrect statement of law or unreasonable decision
Suppose you submitted an application for a post-graduate work permit after completing a 2-year program of study, but the officer applied the criteria for evaluating a bridging open work permit application. Or maybe you took an approved medical leave of absence from your studies and the officer failed to consider how this may be an exception to the rule that you maintain full-time student status throughout your program of study?
Determining an incorrect statement of the law, or whether the officer’s decision making may have been unreasonable, often requires the experience of skilled professional. An immigration lawyer can evaluate incorrect or unreasonable decisions.
Whether pointing to contradictory evidence, explaining misunderstandings, or arguing that the officer applied incorrect law or was unreasonable in their application of the law to your facts, an experience immigration lawyer is often needed to put forth a strong reconsideration request for you.
When to Submit a Reconsideration Request
While there’s no official deadline for submitting a reconsideration request, internal guidelines by IRCC help officers to decide if it is appropriate to take a reconsideration request.
According to these guidelines, you must move fast because a delay suggests that you accepted the decision and officers will refuse to reconsider old decisions.
Other reasons to move fast include:
- IRCC is more likely to take it seriously if you submit it quickly. Wait six months and they’ll assume you are not seriously engaged in the matter.
- The evidence might get stale. Given the passage of time, documents might expire, job offers, experience letters, invitations or study admissions may pass their deadline or “best before” date
- Employers or schools offering jobs or admission may get impatient. Practically speaking, jobs or programs of study may be filled by other applicants before you get your permit.
- Your status might be expiring. If you’re in Canada and your permit is running out, you are racing against a clock to either obtain reconsideration or restore your status.
This explains why most lawyers will tell you to submit your reconsideration request in within a few days and at most a couple of weeks following the refusal.
Who Should Consider Reconsideration?
Reconsideration makes sense when you can point to an obvious error. It’s particularly worth trying when:
- The officer clearly misunderstood key information in your original application
- You have documents that directly address the refusal reasons that appear to have been ignored or missed by the officer
- You need a faster resolution than the court system can provide
- You want to preserve the fees you already paid (reconsideration does not require new application fees)
Officers will not normally receive new evidence in a reconsideration request. It is not a “de novo” appeal. Instead, you are asking the officer to reconsider their decision on the basis of what was provided and stated in the original application.
Reconsideration is less likely to work if you failed to include evidence in the original application that is material – that is, very relevant – to the application.
If you want to present new evidence, you may need to pursue a de novo appeal process. Most immigration appeals, however, are not appeals de novo. So, in most cases, you will need to reapply with the new evidence.
Reconsideration may also be difficult if the officer correctly applied the law but came to an interpretation that, due to faulty logic or reasoning, led to a bizarre conclusion. In this case, the officer may believe that they made a judgment call that falls within the scope of their exercise of discretion.
You are then trying to convince the officer that the way they viewed your situation – in other words, their “world view” – was based in faulty logic. Officers are people too, so it can be expected that – though they are supposed to be impartial, unbiased decision makers – they can fall victim to their ego. In these cases, you do not want to simply point out that the officer is wrong.
Instead, you want to bring them around to your view through respectful and careful legal argumentation where they agree with the legal reasoning process and can identify for themselves where they may have initially been led astray. The persuasive techniques best used are often acquired by experienced immigration lawyers familiar with negotiation with officers.
However, if the officer’s reasoning appears to be grounded in entrenched bias, or is otherwise formed by an unrelenting officer, a reconsideration request may not succeed.
If you wanted to instead reapply in this case, you would be wise to present new, strong evidence that changes that assessment and analysis. Even though a new officer is likely to review your new application, you should be mindful that officers are real people, likely sitting in the same officer, having lunch with and interacting daily, with the officer who first decided your application.
Without strong new evidence to distinguish your new application from the one their colleague refused, you might be better off with an appeal process.
Federal Court Judicial Review for Visa Refusals
An Application for Leave and For Judicial Review is filed in court. This is a judicial process to obtain a legal remedy.
If your application is refused, before you can apply for Judicial review, you must usually research whether an appeal process or an alterative legally binding review mechanism is available. For most immigration applications, there is no alternative process available for you to seek remediation. If there is, the law usually requires you to pursue that alternative first. Notably, a request for reconsideration is not considered a mandatory review procedure: you have no obligation to request this first, and the government is similar not obligated to consider your request for reconsideration. Therefore, Judicial Review is often the only legal way to try to have your case reviewed.
A Judicial Review is typically not an appeal de novo. In other words, no new facts or evidence may be presented at a Judicial Review hearing.
Obtaining Judicial Review is also not a right. You must seek leave – or permission – from a judge of the court to have your case reviewed.
While you have a right to request leave – or permission – the court may deny you this right if they do not believe there are grounds to grant leave.
One consideration on whether to grant leave is timing of the application. The law defines the deadline for you to apply for judicial review. This is called a statutory limitation period.
Commonly, for most immigration or visa applications, you must apply for Leave within 15 or 60 days of receiving the decision.
These deadlines are fairly strict. Compromises and exceptions exist, but for the most part, if you miss your deadline to apply for Leave, the court will not grant you permission to have your case judicially reviewed.
Some reasons that you may not be granted leave include: you did not present a real contestable issue, an alternative review mechanism exists which you were required by law to first pursue, the contemplated remedy requested cannot be granted on judicial review, or your request was based on spurious grounds or intended to cause disruption to the fair administration of justice.
Accordingly, while applying for Leave, you must not only describe your legal concerns and the remedies you seek, but also, you will be asked to argue in detail why your case deserves to be heard. Your arguments will be challenged by the lawyers for the immigration department – the Department of Justice, who represents the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in Federal Judicial Review procedures, or the Attorneys General of the provinces when leave is sought in a provincial division or superior court.
Importantly, a judicial review is typically not a do-over of your application: the judge will not normally reassess your case from scratch and decide whether you deserve a visa. Some exceptions to this exist, such as no other possible conclusion exists, or that the immigration department failed to demonstrate that they could assess your case fairly. In that case, extraordinary intervention by a judge – that is, a decision from the bench – may be made.
However, in most cases, the judge is simply deciding whether the immigration officer applied the correct law, made a reasonable decision or that you were treated fairly. If the judge finds that the law applied was incorrect, that the decision was unreasonable or that you were not treated fairly, the judge can award you with the particular relief you sought.
Thus, you are usually presenting written legal arguments – and if leave is granted, oral arguments in a hearing in court – based on the following:
- IRCC made a legal error. They applied the wrong regulations or legal test.
- The decision was unreasonable. The conclusion reached by the officer was not logical or based on plainly obvious factual mistakes.
- You were not treated fairly. The procedures set out in law to ensure all applicants are treated fairly were not followed in your case, such as you were not given a chance to respond to concerns when you had a legal right to know these concerns, the officer relied on “extraneous facts” or information that was found outside the evidence you presented which you were never shown, or the officer showed bias in their decision making, that is, considered factors that were not set out as relevant in law.
Establishing these grounds requires researched and sophisticated legal arguments. Importantly, legal arguments does not mean “argue” in the common, everyday sense. Instead, legal argumentation is a particular, professional skill – with defined rules and objectives – in which lawyers are trained in law school. This includes establishing or “marshalling” facts, citing law (including relevant legislation and regulations, judge made “case” law and comprehensive legislative-like policies), interpreting the law, applying the law to your facts and, from this, arguing why this interpretation is not only applicable to your facts, but how it could not lead to the decision actually made by the officer and instead leads to an alternative decision in your case.
For these reasons, a judicial review application is not do-it-yourself DIY territory. This is fundamentally what separates a lawyer from the general public, much like how the ability to perform surgery separates a doctor from the general public. It isn’t a question of “can I perform surgery on myself”, it is a question of “should I perform surgery on myself”. Of course, you can take a scalpel and start cutting, but to call this “surgery” isn’t really accurate. Thus, self-representation in court isn’t really “representation” – it’s recklessness.
Visa Appeal Deadlines: 15 or 60 Days
Here’s what catches most people off guard: court deadlines are short and strict, and they are not universal across all courts in Canada.
For Federal Court applications for leave and for judicial review, if the decision was made by an officer in Canada, you must typically apply within 15 calendar days from the date of the decision. Even the process by which the law counts “days” is legalistic: there are formal rules to determine which days to count and when to start counting.
If the decision was made by an officer outside Canada, you must typically apply for leave and for judicial review within 60 days.
The important question questions, therefore, are: to which court are you applying – federal or provincial – and where was the decision made (and not where were you when the decision was made). Just because you were outside Canada doesn’t mean the officer who made the decision was outside Canada. If the officer made the decision in Canada and you were outside of Canada at the time, the shorter deadline is followed. However, if you were inside Canada and applied for a visa to a visa office outside Canada, the longer deadline might be followed.
These deadlines are not the same in provincial divisional or superior court. Those courts and their alternative deadlines may be relevant to a provincial nomination application. It is important that you make sure you know which court to apply for judicial review before you begin so that you can determine your deadlines.
What Happens If You Win?
A win in Federal Court can take many forms, depending on the type of remedy, or relief, requested.
The types of legal remedies available are extensive. The most common sought in an immigration context are: 1. Redetermination, 2. Mandamus, 3. Injunction or Stay, or 4. Declaration.
1. Redetermination means that the judge has ordered a new officer to review your application. Typically, this takes place with a statement or ruling of the judge intended to guide the new officer on how to appropriately assess the application again. Importantly, your application can be refused again on redetermination, so it is important that, if allowed, you submit additional documents when you file is sent back for redetermination in order to improve your application.
2. Mandamus is a relief that compels the government to act. Often, this is sought when the government unreasonably delayed making a decision to a point that it is clear that their delay is their decision. What this means is that, if the government chooses not to review your application and it is stuck in process seemingly “forever”, and there is no good reason for it to be stuck, the judge can order the immigration department to make a decision. It may also be important when requesting Mandamus to also seek simultaneously a conditional declaration to ensure you can bring your case back to court if the government still does not act after the judge has ordered them to.
3. Injunctions or stays stop the government from acting. This may be important to prevent a decision or prevent enforcement of a decision. Injunctions can be interlocutory, that is, an interim order until the final judgement of the court is given, or they can be final, as a means of relieving you from the burden of the decision of the government. Stays, too, can be interim or final. These look similar to injunctions, but differ in that a stay stops the enforcement of a decision until the court can consider whether the government’s decision was correct, reasonable or fair, whereas an injunction prevents the government from making a decision in the first place because the law upon which the government seeks to rely upon is itself problematic. In other words, an injunction stops the application of law whereas a stay stops the enforcement of the law already applied. Thus, stays are often sought to prevent deportations, whereas injunctions are sought to prevent the use of a law that may be unconstitutional or illegal.
4. A declaration is a statement affirming your rights or the government’s obligations to you. These can clarify the law as it applies to you – and others in similar situations. A declaration of invalidity can also state that the law itself is invalid because it violates other superseding law or judgements of the court. Seeking to strike down a law for constitutional invalidity is one strategy that may relieve you from the burden of a law being enforced against you.
Settlement: an outcome within a judicial review process
In many cases where the decision-making process of an officer was clearly flawed, the immigration department may not want to continue fighting your case in court. A lawyer may propose to settle your case. The settlement proposal can come from your lawyer or from the government. Settlement describes the terms upon which you agree to set aside your application for leave and for judicial review, and includes an agreement on what remedies you deserve.
Settlement is an ideal outcome for most clients because you avoid a lengthy hearing and can reach your desired conclusion sooner. Settlement is also idea for the government because it avoids a judgement being rendered against the government, and thus avoids creating case law unfavourable to the government.
You must usually present strong legal arguments to the government’s lawyers after initiating a judicial review to convince them that they should ask their client – the immigration department – to settle your case. This often involves direct lawyer-to-lawyer communication on behalf of you with the lawyers for the government.
Contact Mandelbaum Immigration Lawyers About Your Visa Refusal
Don’t let a visa refusal end your plans. Whether you need help understanding your IRCC reconsideration options, preparing a Federal Court judicial review application, or exploring alternative immigration strategies, contact us today.
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FAQ - Canada Visa Refusal Appeals - Toronto Immigration Lawyers
How do I appeal a visa refusal in Canada?
Yes, in most cases. You have four main options:
- IRCC Reconsideration – ask the officer to review their decision,
- Federal Court Judicial Review – challenge the decision in court with strict 15 or 60-day deadlines,
- Immigration and Refugee Board Appeal – for certain application types, or
- New Application – reapply with stronger evidence. Your deadline starts from the date you received the decision, not when you get GCMS notes.
What's the difference between reconsideration and judicial review?
Reconsideration is an informal request to IRCC to review their decision based on evidence already submitted.
No official deadline but must act within days/weeks. Judicial Review is a formal court process with strict deadlines (15-60 days) requiring legal arguments about errors in law, unreasonable decisions, or procedural unfairness. Judicial review requires permission from a judge and focuses on whether the decision was legally correct, not a complete reassessment.
What are GCMS notes and why do I need them?
GCMS notes are detailed internal records showing exactly what the immigration officer considered when refusing your application. While your refusal letter gives vague reasons like “not satisfied you will leave Canada,” GCMS notes reveal the real reasoning, which documents were reviewed, and specific concerns.
Critical problem: GCMS notes take 30+ days to receive, but your Federal Court appeal deadline may be only 15 days. Experienced lawyers often file appeals before receiving notes to protect your deadline.
What are the deadlines for appealing a visa refusal?
Federal Court Judicial Review: 15 calendar days if the decision was made in Canada, or 60 days if made outside Canada. The deadline starts when you received the decision, not when you get GCMS notes.
IRCC Reconsideration: No official deadline, but must submit within days or weeks – delays signal acceptance of the decision. Missing these deadlines can eliminate your appeal options entirely.
When should I use an IRCC reconsideration request?
Use reconsideration when you can point to an obvious error: the officer misunderstood key evidence already in your application, missed important documents, or applied incorrect law. It works best when strong evidence contradicting the refusal was already submitted. Reconsideration doesn’t allow new evidence, is faster than court, and doesn’t require new application fees.
It’s less likely to work if critical evidence was missing from your original application or if you need to submit new documents.
Do I need a lawyer for a visa refusal appeal?
For Federal Court judicial review, professional representation is essential. Self-representation is strongly discouraged – it requires sophisticated legal argumentation, understanding of case law and regulations, and arguing against Department of Justice lawyers.
As we explain: it’s not about whether you can represent yourself, but whether you should. For IRCC reconsideration, while possible to do yourself, success requires understanding immigration law and persuasive legal writing. Lawyers can file before your deadline expires and before GCMS notes arrive, protecting your appeal rights.