Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will often tell people that they do not need to hire a lawyer or consultant in order to immigrate to Canada. They are right.
In 2018, IRCC approved 191,337 applications for permanent residence. Of these, 7,334 were represented by a lawyer, 11,262 by a regulated consultant, 52,066 by a family member or friend, and 191,337 had no representative.
IRCC in 2018 also approved 17,678 temporary residence applications in which there was a lawyer as representative, 17,554 in which there was a regulated consultant, 258,802 in which the representative was a family member or a friend, and 2,448,311 in which the person was unrepresented.
While the above statistics do not show approval rates or refusals, which are not publicly available, and it is possible that there is a prevalence of ghost representation that is not reflected in the statistics, the approval figures certainly demonstrate that it is not necessary to hire a representative to immigrate to Canada.
