Can you leave Canada while a humanitarian and compassionate application is under review?

The question comes up in the same shape almost every time. A parent is dying, a sibling is getting married, a property has to be sold, and there is an application for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds sitting at a processing centre with no decision in sight. The client wants to know whether a two-week trip will destroy years of work.

The short answer is that leaving Canada does not cancel your application. The longer answer is that this is rarely the risk that matters.

Leaving does not withdraw the application

There is no rule that an H&C application dies when the applicant boards a plane. Withdrawal is a formal act. IRCC guidance is explicit that an applicant who wants to withdraw must do so in writing, and that where contact is lost the officer is to press on: the application must be processed through to a decision (i.e. approval or refusal), and decision-makers should not withdraw an application unless the applicant has formally requested it.

So the file survives your departure. That is genuinely the easy part of this question, and it is the part most people are asking about. It is also the part that matters least.

The real risk is getting back in

An H&C application under subsection 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is a request for an exemption. It is not status. It does not authorise you to be in Canada, it does not authorise you to work, and it gives you nothing at a port of entry. The moment you leave, you are an ordinary foreign national asking to be let in.

That means three things have to line up. You need a valid temporary resident visa or eTA. You need to be admissible. And the officer has to be satisfied that you will leave Canada at the end of the period authorised for your stay.

Subsection 22(2) of IRPA helps here, and it is worth knowing about: an intention to become a permanent resident does not preclude you from becoming a temporary resident, provided the officer is satisfied you will leave when your authorised stay ends. That is the dual-intent provision. It means a pending PR application is not, by itself, a reason to refuse you. It does not mean you will be waved through.

Here is why that matters so much for this particular group. Most people who file an in-Canada H&C application do so precisely because their status is thin, expired, or gone. That is usually the whole reason for the application. Someone in that position who leaves the country is asking a visa officer abroad, or an officer at the border, to admit a person with a documented history of remaining in Canada without status and an open application to stay permanently. That is a hard conversation to have from outside.

If you are under a removal order, leaving means something different

This is where an ordinary trip turns into an immigration event, and where I see the most damage done.

A departure order gives you 30 days from the day it becomes enforceable to leave and to confirm your departure with the CBSA. Do that properly and the order is treated as enforced, and section 224(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations exempts you from having to obtain an authorisation to return.

Miss the 30 days, or leave without confirming, and section 224(2) converts the departure order into a deportation order. From that point, section 52(1) of IRPA applies: once a removal order has been enforced, you cannot return to Canada without an officer authorising it. An Authorization to Return to Canada is a separate application, with a separate fee, and it is discretionary.

People do this to themselves accidentally, all the time. They leave for a funeral, tell nobody, and come back to find that a departure order quietly became a deportation order while they were in the air.

What stage you are at changes the picture

An in-Canada H&C is decided in two stages: an assessment of the requested exemptions, known as stage 1 or approval in principle, and then a final decision on the permanent residence application at stage 2.

Before any decision. The file continues. The exposure is entirely at the border, and it is exactly as described above.

After approval in principle. This is the stage where people relax, and they should not. Approval in principle is a favourable first-stage assessment. It is not permanent residence, it is not a visa, and it is not status. IRCC maintains distinct guidance for the scenario where an applicant has left Canada after a positive stage 1 assessment, which tells you the department has seen it happen often enough to write a procedure. It does not tell you the outcome is good.

After removal. Being removed is not automatically the end. IRCC guidance contemplates post-removal assessment. But you are now outside the country arguing for an exemption, and every practical advantage you had — established life in Canada, community ties, a child in school here — is being argued in the past tense.

The cases where travelling is defensible

I do not tell every client never to leave. Some reasons are strong enough that the risk is worth taking, and refusing to acknowledge that is its own kind of bad advice. What separates a defensible trip from a reckless one is preparation.

• Confirm what you actually hold. Not what you think you hold. A valid multiple-entry TRV, a valid passport, and no removal order is a different situation from a maintained-status extension and a departure order.
• Deal with the removal order first, if there is one. Whether it is enforced, and whether it is confirmed, decides whether you can come back at all.
• Keep IRCC in the loop. The onus sits on the applicant to provide information and to tell IRCC about anything new. Where correspondence goes unanswered, the officer decides on the file as it stands. That is how good applications get refused on paper for reasons that have nothing to do with their merits.
• Keep an address that works. Someone in Canada must be able to receive, open and act on a request for information within the deadline. Late submissions are only reconsidered in narrow circumstances.
• Document the reason. If the trip is for a death or a serious illness, the evidence you gather at the time is worth far more than an explanation constructed a year later.

Two mistakes that are hard to undo

Assuming approval in principle is status. It is not, and the gap between stage 1 and landing can run for a long time. Nothing about a positive stage 1 gives you a right to re-enter.

Leaving while a refugee claim is live. That is a different regime with different consequences, and it interacts with the H&C bars: a pending claim before the Refugee Protection Division or the Refugee Appeal Division bars an H&C application outright, and a negative decision triggers a 12-month bar, subject to narrow exceptions for a risk to life from inadequate medical care or the best interests of a child.

What to do before you book anything

Get the file reviewed before the ticket is bought, not after. The questions worth answering are narrow and answerable: what status do you hold today, is there a removal order and what kind, what is your re-entry document, and where in the two-stage process does your application sit. Those four answers determine whether a trip is an inconvenience or the end of your case.

If you are weighing this decision now, book a consultation before you travel. If a decision has already gone against you, the refusals and remedies page sets out what can still be done and how quickly it has to be done.

Sources: Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, subsections 25(1), 22(2) and 52(1); Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, section 224; IRCC program delivery instructions, Humanitarian and compassionate considerations: Processing in-Canada applications and Intake and who may apply. General information only, not legal advice. H&C outcomes turn on individual facts; obtain advice on your own file before you act.