Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has quietly rewritten the instructions that visa officers follow when assessing study-permit applications for students enrolled in joint academic programs—arrangements that require study at more than one designated learning institution (DLI) or in more than one province.
Published on February 6 2026, the updated guidance means that, starting immediately, applicants in joint programs need to submit only a single provincial or territorial attestation letter (PAL/TAL). Until now they had to secure a separate attestation from every college or university—and, in many cases, from every province—involved in the program. That duplication routinely added several weeks, extra courier fees and multiple layers of bureaucracy to an application file.
IRCC says the change is part of its ongoing effort to make the study-permit system “proportionate and risk-based” as overall international-student numbers are capped and provinces are asked to play a larger gate-keeping role. Universities Canada and Colleges & Institutes Canada—two umbrella groups that lobbied hard for the tweak—estimate that roughly 12,000 international students a year choose joint or pathway programs, many of them in fields such as engineering and health where mobility between campuses is a curricular requirement.
![Canada Eases Study-Permit Paperwork for Joint Academic Programs]()
For extra guidance, many applicants are turning to VisaHQ, an online visa-processing service whose Canada portal (https://www.visahq.com/canada/) supplies step-by-step checklists, live support and up-to-date information on the single PAL/TAL procedure—helping students assemble complete files and avoid costly delays.
For institutions, the simplified rule removes an administrative headache at the exact moment they are adapting to the federal government’s new national cap on study permits and a revamped cost-of-living threshold. For students, the practical benefits are immediate: fewer documents to track, lower translation and notarization costs, and one less opportunity for an officer to refuse an application on the basis of “missing required documents.”
Advisers are urging prospective students to double-check that their chosen joint program is still designated under the Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) list and to confirm which province will issue the single PAL—particularly important if the participating institutions are in Quebec, whose immigration rules differ from the rest of Canada.(cicnews.com)
Published on February 6 2026, the updated guidance means that, starting immediately, applicants in joint programs need to submit only a single provincial or territorial attestation letter (PAL/TAL). Until now they had to secure a separate attestation from every college or university—and, in many cases, from every province—involved in the program. That duplication routinely added several weeks, extra courier fees and multiple layers of bureaucracy to an application file.
IRCC says the change is part of its ongoing effort to make the study-permit system “proportionate and risk-based” as overall international-student numbers are capped and provinces are asked to play a larger gate-keeping role. Universities Canada and Colleges & Institutes Canada—two umbrella groups that lobbied hard for the tweak—estimate that roughly 12,000 international students a year choose joint or pathway programs, many of them in fields such as engineering and health where mobility between campuses is a curricular requirement.
For extra guidance, many applicants are turning to VisaHQ, an online visa-processing service whose Canada portal (https://www.visahq.com/canada/) supplies step-by-step checklists, live support and up-to-date information on the single PAL/TAL procedure—helping students assemble complete files and avoid costly delays.
For institutions, the simplified rule removes an administrative headache at the exact moment they are adapting to the federal government’s new national cap on study permits and a revamped cost-of-living threshold. For students, the practical benefits are immediate: fewer documents to track, lower translation and notarization costs, and one less opportunity for an officer to refuse an application on the basis of “missing required documents.”
Advisers are urging prospective students to double-check that their chosen joint program is still designated under the Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) list and to confirm which province will issue the single PAL—particularly important if the participating institutions are in Quebec, whose immigration rules differ from the rest of Canada.(cicnews.com)
